The concert being ended and the cards ready, I was invited to draw for partners. One elderly lady was particularly pressing. I excused myself, and Miss said pouting to her mamma, but looking traverse at the elderly lady, 'Law mamma, you are so teazing! We have made up a little conversazione party of our own, and you want to spoil it by taking Mr. Trevor from us! I declare,' continued she, turning her back on the card tables and lowering her voice, 'that old Tabby is never contented but when she is at her honours and her tricks! But let her alone! She never goes away a loser! She has more tricks than honours!'
I presume it was not the first time that she had said this good thing; at least it was not the last, for I heard it every time afterward that the parties met on a like occasion. The old lady however contrived before they broke up to weary me into compliance. I played a single rubber, lost a guinea, and was asked for my half crown to put under the candlestick. I say, asked; for I have before observed that I came up to London ignorant of every point of good breeding. I could not have surmised that the six packs of half dirty cards were to be subscribed for by the company at half a crown a head.
CHAPTER V
Politics and patriotism of a lord: A grand undertaking: Sublime effusions, or who but I: Politics and taste of Enoch: The honey changed to gall, or rules for fine writers
The next day about noon, his lordship sent his compliments, informing me he should be glad of my company. I hastened to him, eager to have an opportunity privately to display, before a lord, my knowledge, wit, and understanding.
After a short introductory dialogue, his lordship turned the conversation on politics, and it so happened that, though my ideas on this subject were but feeble and ill arranged, yet it had not wholly escaped my attention. While I was at Oxford, the want of a parliamentary reform had agitated the whole nation, and was too real and glaring an evil not to be convincing to a young and unprejudiced mind. The extension of the excise laws had likewise produced in me strong feelings of anger; and the enormous and accumulating national debt had been described to me as a source of imminent, absolute, and approaching ruin.
These and similar ideas though all more or less crude I detailed, and concluded my creed with asserting my conviction that government used corrupt and immoral means, and that these were destructive of the end which it meant to obtain.
His lordship was quite in raptures to hear me; and declared he could not have expected such sound doctrine, from so young a man. 'Yes, Mr. Trevor,' continued he, 'government is indeed corrupt! It has opposed me in three elections; one for a county, the others for two popular boroughs. The opposition has cost me fifty thousand pounds, and I lost them all. Time was when the minister might have made me his friend; but I am now his irreconcilable enemy, and I will hang upon his skirts and never quit him, no, not for a moment, till he is turned out of office with disgrace. He ought not to have angered me, for I and my friends kept aloof: he knew I did, and he might—But now I have openly joined the opposition, and nothing less than his ruin shall satisfy me! I am exceedingly happy, Mr. Trevor, to find you reason so justly on these subjects; and to say the truth I shall be very glad of your assistance.'
I answered his lordship that I should be equally glad, if I could contribute to the good government and improvement of mankind by correcting their present errors; and that the vices I had mentioned, and every other vice that I could discover, I should always think it my duty to oppose.
'That,' answered his lordship, 'is right, Mr. Trevor! You speak my own sentiments! Opposition, strong severe and bitter, is what I am determined on! Your principles and mine are the same, and I am resolved he shall repent of having made me his enemy! We will communicate our thoughts to each other, and as you are a young man whose talents were greatly esteemed at —— college, and who know how to place arguments in a striking form, I have no doubt of our success. I will make him shake in his seat!'