“Mr. Speaker, if we once permitted the villainous French masons to meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop nor stay, sir, till they brought the foundation-stones tumbling down about the ears of the nation.... Here, perhaps, sirs, the murderous Marshellaw men (Marseillais) would break in, cut us to mincemeat, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table, to stare us in the face.”
When a member had committed a breach of privilege, and the sergeant-at-arms was censured for letting him escape, he said—
“How could the sergeant-at-arms stop him in the rear, while he was catching him in the front? Could he, like a bird, be in two places at once?”
In opposing a proposed grant for some public works, he said—
“What, Mr. Speaker, and so we are to beggar ourselves for the fear of vexing posterity? Now, I would ask the honourable gentleman, and this still more honourable house, why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity; for what has posterity done for us! (Laughter.) I apprehend gentlemen have entirely mistaken my words. I assure the house that by posterity I do not mean my ancestors, but those who are to come immediately after them.”
Sir Boyle Roche (1740?—1807).
THE MONKS OF THE SCREW.
When St. Patrick this order established,
He called us the “Monks of the Screw”;