University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

Tom's Coffee-house. In the background, gentlemen seated in different compartments, or “boxes.”
Enter Walpole and Veasey from opposite sides.
VEASEY.
Ha! good day, my dear patron.

WALPOLE.
Good day, my dear friend;
You can spare me five minutes?

VEASEY.
Five thousand.

WALPOLE.
Attend;
I am just from the king, and I failed not to press him
To secure to his service John Veasey.

VEASEY.
God bless him!

WALPOLE.
George's reign, just begun, your tried worth will distinguish.

VEASEY.
Oh, a true English king!

WALPOLE.
Tho' he cannot speak English.

VEASEY.
You must find that defect a misfortune, I fear.

WALPOLE.
The reverse; for no rivals can get at his ear.
It is something to be the one public man pat in
The new language that now governs England, dog Latin.

VEASEY.
Happy thing for these kingdoms that you have that gift,
Or, alas! thro' what shoals all our counsels would drift.

WALPOLE.
Yes, the change from Queen Anne to King George, we must own,
Renders me and the Whigs the sole props of the throne.
For the Tories their Jacobite leanings disgrace,
And a Whig is the only safe man for a place.

VEASEY.
And the Walpoles of Houghton, in all their relations,
Have been Whigs to the backbone for three generations.

WALPOLE.
Ay, my father and mother contrived to produce
Their eighteen sucking Whigs for the family use,
Of which number one only, without due reflection,
Braved the wrath of her house by a Tory connection.
But, by Jove, if her Jacobite husband be living,
I will make him a Whig.

VEASEY.
How?

WALPOLE.
By something worth giving:
For I loved her in boyhood, that pale pretty sister;
And in counting the Walpoles still left, I have mist her.
(Pauses in emotion, but quickly recovers himself.)
What was it I said?—Oh,—the State and the Guelph,
For their safety, must henceforth depend on myself.
The revolt, scarcely quenched, has live sparks in its ashes;
Nay, fresh seeds for combustion were sown by its flashes.
Each example we make dangerous pity bequeathes;
For no Briton likes blood in the air that he breathes.

VEASEY.
Yes; at least there's one rebel whose doom to the block
Tho' deserved, gives this soft-hearted people a shock.

WALPOLE.
Lord Nithsdale, you mean; handsome, young, and just wedded,—
A poor head, that would do us much harm if beheaded.

VEASEY.
Yet they say you rejected all prayers for his life.

WALPOLE.
It is true; but in private I've talked to his wife:
She had orders to see him last night in the Tower.
And—

VEASEY.
Well?

WALPOLE
(looking at his watch).
Wait for the news—'tis not yet quite the hour.
Ah! poor England, I fear, at the General Election,
Will vote strong in a mad anti-Whiggish direction.
From a Jacobite Parliament we must defend her,
Or the King will be Stuart, and Guelph the Pretender.
And I know but one measure to rescue our land
From the worst of all ills—Civil War.

VEASEY.
True; we stand
At that dread turning-point in the life of a State
When its free choice would favour what freedom should hate;
When the popular cause, could we poll population—

WALPOLE.
Would be found the least popular thing in the nation.

VEASEY.
Scarce a fourth of this people are sound in their reason—

WALPOLE.
But we can't hang the other three-fourths for high treason.

VEASEY.
Tell me, what is the measure your wisdom proposes?

WALPOLE.
In its third year, by law, this Whig Parliament closes.
But the law! What's the law in a moment so critical?
Church and State must be saved from a House Jacobitical.
Let this Parliament then, under favour of heaven,
Lengthen out its existence from three years to seven.

VEASEY.
Brilliant thought! could the State keep its present directors
Undisturbed for a time by those rowdy electors,
While this new German tree, just transplanted, takes root,
Dropping down on the lap of each friend golden fruit,
Britain then would be saved from all chance of reaction
To the craft and corruption of Jacobite faction.
But ah! think you the Commons would swallow the question?

WALPOLE.
That depends on what pills may assist their digestion.
I could make—see this list—our majority sure,
If by buying two men I could sixty secure;
For as each of these two is the chief of a section
That will vote black or white at its leader's direction,
Let the pipe of the shepherd but lure the bellwether,
And he folds the whole flock, wool and cry, altogether.
Well, the first of these two worthy members you guess.

VEASEY.
Sure, you cannot mean Blount, virtuous Selden Blount?

WALPOLE.
Yes.

VEASEY.
What! your sternest opponent, half Cato, half Brutus,
He, whose vote incorruptible—

WALPOLE.
Just now would suit us;
For a patriot so stanch could with dauntless effrontery—

VEASEY.
Sell himself?

WALPOLE.
Why, of course, for the good of his country.
True, his price will be high—he is worth forty votes,
And his salary must pay for the change in their coats.
Prithee, has not his zeal for his fatherland—rather
Overburthened the lands he received from his father?

VEASEY.
Well, 'tis whispered in clubs that his debts somewhat tease him.

WALPOLE.
I must see him in private, and study to ease him.
Will you kindly arrange that he call upon me
At my home, not my office, to-day—just at three?
Not a word that can hint at the object in view—
Say some bill in the House that concerns him and you;
And on which, as distinct from all party disputes,
Members meet without tearing each other like brutes.

VEASEY.
Lucky thought—Blount and I both agree in Committee
On a bill for amending the dues of the City—

WALPOLE.
And the Government wants to enlighten its soul
On the price which the public should pay for its coal.
We shall have him, this Puritan chief of my foes.
Now the next one to catch is the chief of the Beaux;
All our young members mimic his nod or his laugh;
And if Blount be worth forty votes, he is worth half.

VEASEY.
Eh! Bellair, whose defence of the Jacobite peers—

WALPOLE.
Thrilled the House; Mister Speaker himself was in tears.
Faith, I thought he'd have beat us. (Taking snuff.)


VEASEY.
That fierce peroration—

WALPOLE.
Which compared me to Nero—superb (brushing the snuff from his lace lappet)
declamation!

VEASEY.
Yes; a very fine speaker.

WALPOLE.
Of that there's no doubt,
For he speaks about things he knows nothing about.
But I still to our party intend to unite him—
Secret Service Department—Bellair—a small item.

VEASEY.
Nay, you jest—for this gay maiden knight in debate,
To a promise so brilliant adds fortune so great—

WALPOLE.
That he is not a man to be bought by hard cash;
But he's vain and conceited, light-hearted and rash.
Every favourite of fortune hopes still to be greater,
And a beau must want something to turn a debater.
Hem! I know a Duke's daughter, young, sprightly, and fair;
She will wed as I wish her; hint that to Bellair;
Ay, and if he will put himself under my steerage,
Say that with the Duke's daugther I throw in the peerage.

VEASEY.
Those are baits that a vain man of wit may seduce.

WALPOLE.
Or, if not, his political creed must be loose;
To some Jacobite plot he will not be a stranger,
And to win him securely—

VEASEY.
We'll get him in danger.
Hist!

Enter Bellair, humming a tune.