[8] And this for a considerable period of time. In the last case of the Corn Laws, by his own account, it would seem to have been about three years.
[9] See this point well put in Whewell’s Treatise on Morals—a book which we strongly recommend to Sir Robert’s perusal, as containing many interesting views on these topics, and likely to be of peculiar service to him.
[10] Vide again Whewell’s Treatise.
[11] In the matter of the Factory Bill.
[12] Simply in its peculiar naïveté. We do not mean to assimilate the Irish character with that of Peel.
“Cleon.—There, I’m the first, you see, to bring ye a chair.
Sausage-seller.—But a table—here I’ve brought it, first and foremost.
Cleon.—See here this little half meal-cake from Pylos,
Made from the flour of victory and success.
Sausage-seller.—But here’s a cake! See here! which the heavenly goddess
Patted and flatted herself, with her ivory hand,
For your own eating.
* * * * *
Cleon.—This slice of rich sweet-cake, take it from me.
Sausage-seller.—This whole great rich sweet-cake, take it from me.
Cleon [to the S. S.]—Ah, but hare-pie—where will you get hare-pie?
Sausage-seller [aside.]—Hare-pie! What shall I do? Come, now’s the time,
O mind, invent me now some sneaking trick.
Cleon. [to the S. S. showing the dish which he is going to present.]—Look there, you poor rapscallion!
Sausage-seller. Pshaw, no matter.
I’ve people of my own there in attendance.
They’re coming here.—I see them.
Cleon.—Who? What are they?
Sausage-seller.—Envoys with bags of money.
Cleon.—Where? Where are they?
Where? Where?
Sausage-seller.—What’s that to you? Can’t ye be civil?
Why don’t you let the foreigners alone?—
[While Cleon’s attention is absorbed in looking for the supposed envoys, the Sausage-seller dexterously snatches the hare-pie out of his hands, and presents it to the Demus.]
There’s a hare-pie, my dear own little Demus,
A nice hare-pie, I’ve brought ye!—See, look there!
Cleon [returning.]—By Jove, he’s stolen it, and served it up!
Sausage-seller.—Just as you did the prisoners at Pylos.
Demus.—Where did ye get it? How did ye steal it? Tell me.
Sausage-seller.—The scheme and the suggestion were Divine;
The theft and the execution simply mine.
Cleon.—I took the trouble.
Sausage-seller. But I served it up.
Demus.—Well, he that brings the thing must get the thanks.
Cleon [aside.]—Alas, I’m circumvented and undone,
Out-faced and over-impudentified.”The Knights of Aristophanes, translated by Frere, l. 1164-9, and 1189-1206.
[14] We would not apply this strong language to all the advocates of the measure, but only to those who uphold it on principle as an enlightened and liberal one. If it is honestly put forward on low commercial grounds, not on high moral ones; if it is frankly confessed that it is an ignoble and selfish measure, in which our love of sugar and of revenue prevails over the love of our fellows; if we own that we have not virtue enough to resist these palpable and material temptations for the sake of the impalpable and invisible ones of right and humanity;—let it pass, (sorry though it be;)—our pious and enlightened nation is already disfigured with too many of these commercial blots, to make this further additional one matter of much especial censure. We can only lament that having made some beginning in the true and good line, we are so easily induced to give it up; that whereas before we could point to one brilliant exception as a source of light and hope, this is now to be extinguished, and we are to relapse into total darkness. But it is the advocacy of this measure on principle, as an eminently liberal and Christian one, as a triumph of truth, liberty, and reason, which is so peculiarly disgusting, and argues the corruption of the people. It is the sneer at every thing like true generous principle, the laugh at the high moral, the complacency in the low commercial, the assertion of the paramount importance of mere considerations of lucre over all the laws of humanity, that forms the bad feature in the case of these holy Liberals. When we find people, in a tone of profound piety, putting forth the purely commercial principle of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, as an inviolable law of the Great Parent of the Universe, the infringement of which, even to avert the deepest suffering from our fellows, is an impious rebellion against His will; when we are implored not to do evil, that good may come, (the evil being a want of sweetness in our tea, and the good, the preserving from slavery and degradation a large number of our race;) when we are exhorted to deal freely in slave produce, for the sake of promoting “peace and good-will among all mankind;” then, I say, that this servile liberality, this Evangelical cupidity, this Christianity of the ’Change, is beyond all expression detestable, and more worthy of the shafts of Voltaire’s satire than the Christianity of the Inquisition. The present measure will probably cause a greater amount of suffering in the course of a few years, than the Inquisition did during the whole period of its existence.
[15] The above conversation, though with no pretensions to exact accuracy in the expressions, is strictly founded on fact.
[16] Hansard’s Debates, vol. xx. New Series, p. 731. The speech is said, in a note on p. 727, to have been “inserted with the permission and approbation of Mr. Secretary Peel.”