But Roebuck was England's salvation."
And he, according to this programme, set himself to reform the Constitution and protect the Colonies.
"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,"
he was an eclectic in politics,—acknowledged no leader, had himself no followers. A chief without a party, an apostle without disciples, a critic without the merest ordinary penetration, a cynic whose bitterness was not enlivened by wit or humor, a spouter whose arguments, when he had any, were usually furnished from the mint, John Arthur Roebuck was for many [pg 396] years that impersonation of terrific honesty, glaring purity, and indignant virtue, known in English politics as an INDEPENDENT member of Parliament. When party-spirit runs high, and many party-men are disposed to be unscrupulous in the measures and artifices by which they win or retain place and power, such a position, occupied with judgment and fortified by modesty and good sense, is a most powerful and a most beneficent one; but it is useless when seized on by one whose obtrusive egotism and more than feminine vanity disqualify him for any serious or permanent influence on his fellow-men. When a Pocket-Diogenes rolls his little tub into the House of Commons, and complains that everybody is standing between him and the sun,—why, in an assembly of educated and sensible men the sham is soon discovered, the pseudo-cynic seen through, and his affected misanthropy deservedly gains for him universal derision and scorn. Some years after he entered Parliament, Mr. Disraeli, with whom he had many encounters, in which he was invariably worsted, made the House roar with laughter by taunting Roebuck with his "Sadler's Wells sarcasms and melodramatic malignities," and drew a most amusing picture of him as "a solitary sentinel pacing round the deserted citadel of his own opinions."
"He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below";
but as Mr. Roebuck has done neither the one nor the other, his only chance of not being utterly forgotten, instead of being feared or hated, by his contemporaries, is to continue his work of mischief, and merely change the object of his puny attacks as one becomes more prominent than another, and as he can manage to maintain his own quasi-importance by attaching his name to great questions. He had no special dislike for this country; so far from that, he admired and praised us, as by an extract from one of his books we will presently prove; but since he has become a self-appointed lackey, has donned imperial livery, and as a volunteer does the dirty work of despots, he must have lost all sympathy with and all regard for an independent, free, and brave people. We hope and believe that this country vastly prefers his censure to his praise, and, as far as it has leisure at the present crisis for any serious consideration of his erratic pranks, would rather have his enmity than his friendship. Non tali auxilio!
But we must recur to his inconsistent and rather uninteresting career, and so satisfy, and perhaps weary, the curiosity of any reader who is still disposed to ask the momentous question, "Who is Roebuck?"
In 1835, he was appointed the agent—the paid agent—of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, during the dispute then raging between the Executive Government and the House of Assembly. As Englishmen especially plume themselves on the fact that the members of their legislative bodies are unremunerated, it is somewhat difficult to understand how this exception was made in John Arthur's favor. As a precedent it is to be hoped that it has not been followed; for it is obvious that such an arrangement, however advantageous or pleasant to individual members, might throw grave suspicions on the purity of public men, and introduce a wholesale venality into public life. If such a system is permitted, any foreign monarch or any foreign government may secure the services of a British senator as his agent and representative. It is quite appalling to think that the chivalrous Earl of Derby or the conscientious Mr. Gladstone should be shocked by the offer of a handsome annual salary paid quarterly, (not deducting the income-tax,) made by the King of Dahomey for an eloquent defence of his humane and enlightened rule, or by an equally munificent donative from the famous and merry monarch of the Cannibal Islands for the support of himself and his loyal subjects in their copious consumption of human flesh. We should be sorry wantonly to raise so dreadful a suspicion; but if British M.P.s are permitted, [pg 397] according to the Roebuck precedent, to be PAID agents, why has not Southern money found its way into senatorial pockets? Greedy Mr. Laird, and unscrupulous, money-loving Mr. Lindsay,[18] always resolutely grubbing for the main chance, are perhaps sufficiently paid by indirect, though heavy gains in shipbuilding. Needy Mr. Roebuck may be salaried by the Emperor of Austria, though there is nothing to prove, except his own open-mouthed and loud-tongued professions of purity, that he is not "paid agent" of the Confederate Government. The indulgence of the evil feelings of malice and uncharitableness may, however, sufficiently recompense him; and to him, perhaps, his virtue may be its own reward. But if paid agencies are not permitted, a very serious suspicion fastens on that hard-mouthed, rising lordling, Robert Cecil, son of the Marquis of Salisbury, and one of the most active and energetic champions of the slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but portionless daughter of an English judge; his father is proverbially mean and stingy, and the young lord himself proportionately poor; and in the intervals of his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the Rebels to European recognition he laudably ekes out his very narrow income by writing articles for the London newspapers and reviews; and rumor says that he communicates gossiping letters, full of piquant and satirical sketches of the proceedings of the House of Commons to two or three of the provincial papers. He is under these circumstances peculiarly open to suspicion. If the proceeding in question is a usual one, why does he not openly avow it? If it is unusual or improper, why does he not deny the soft impeachment so much credited both in this country and in his own? It is really refreshing to contemplate, that Roebuck, after being the paid agent of the Canadian House of Assembly, should have become such a purist as to drag poor Mr. Isaac Butt before the notice of the Commons, and scream for the censure on him on a mere suspicion that he had touched the yellow and handsome gold coins of one of the innumerable Indian princes and rajahs who come to England with complaints of grievances, sometimes real, and sometimes fictitious, against the British Government.