Chronicles of the city of Gotham from the papers of a retired common councilman. Containing The azure hose. The politician. The dumb girl |
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| 2. | THE POLITICAN |
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 | Chronicles of the city of Gotham |  |
2. THE POLITICIAN.
2. THE POLITICAN
Make men on whom they are bestowed no better
Than glorious slaves, the servants of the vulgar.
Men sweat at helm as well as at the oar.
Here is a glass within shall show you, sir,
The vanity of these silkworms that do think
They toil not, 'cause they spin their thread so fine.
Randolph.
One of the most dangerous characters in the
world is a man who habitually sacrifices the eternal,
immutable obligations of truth and justice, and the
charities of social life, at the shrine of an abstract
principle, about which one half of mankind differs
from the other half. Whether this abstract principle
is connected with religion or politics, is of little
consequence; since, after all, morals constitute the
essence of religion, and social duties, the foundation
of government. Whatever is essentially necessary
to the conduct of our lives, the performance of our
duties to our families, our neighbours, and our
country, is easy of comprehension; and it requires
neither argument nor metaphysics to teach us what
is right or what is wrong. These are great fundamental
principles, modified indeed by the state of
nature and obligations are every where the same,
inflexible and universal in their application. A
close examination of the history of the world in
every age, will go far to convince us that a vast
portion of the crimes, and miseries, and oppressions
of mankind, has originated in a difference, not in
morals, but in abstract ideas; not in fundamental
principles, but vague, indefinite abstractions, incomprehensible
to the great mass, and having not the
remotest connection with our moral and social duties.
When men come to assume these contested principles,
these metaphysical refinements, as indispensable
to the salvation of the soul or the preservation
of the state, and to substitute them in the place of
the everlasting pillars of truth and justice, they cast
themselves loose from their moorings, to drift at
random in the stream, the sport of every eddy, the
dupes of every bubble, the victims of every shoal and
quicksand. Instead of sailing by the bright star of
mariners, which sparkles for ever in the same pure
sphere, they shape their course by the fleeting vapour
which is never the same; which rises in the
morning, a fog; ascends a fantastic cloud; and
vanishes in the splendours of the noontide sun.
The following sketch of my own history will serve
to illustrate the preceding observations, by showing
how near an adherence to certain vague, contested,
abstract principles in politics, brought me to a breach
of all the cardinal virtues.
I am a politician by inheritance. My guardian,
for I was early left an orphan, was the great man of
a little state that had more banks and great men
than any state of its inches in the universe. The
state was too small to accommodate more than one
great man at a time; and the consequence was an
incessant struggle to keep one another's heads under
water. Like the buckets of a well, as one rose the
other sunk; and the filling of one was the emptying
of the other. These struggles for the helm of the
little vessel of state kept up a perpetual excitement.
The puddle of our politics was ever in a mighty
storm, and like Pope's sylph, our illustrious great
men were continually in danger of perishing in the
foam of a cup of hot chocolate. Then, our political
barque was so small that the veriest zephyr was
enough to upset her, and Gulliver's frog would have
shipwrecked us outright.
From my earliest years I heard nothing but politics.
Our family circle were all politicians; men,
women, and children. The wife of my guardian
made it a point of faith, never to believe any thing
good of the females of the opposite party; and
though she was too conscientious to invent scandals
herself, she religiously believed the slanders of
others. Her candour never went beyond acknowledging
that she believed ignorance and not wickedness
was at the bottom of their want of political
principle. The only daughter, naturally an amiable
girl, publicly gave out she would never marry
greater man than the Honourable Dibble Dibblee,
innkeeper at Dibbleesville, his most formidable rival.
Love however proved at last too potent for politics,
and she relented in favour of a handsome and rich
Dibbleeite.
For my part, I was nurtured at the breast of
politics, and imbibed a nutriment gloriously concocted
of a hundred absurd, ridiculous, unneighbourly,
and unchristian prejudices and antipathies.
With me the world was divided, not into the good
and the bad, the wise and the foolish, but into the
adherents of the Honourable Dibble Dibblee, innkeeper
at Dibbleesville, and those of the Honourable
Peleg Peshell, cash-store keeper at Peshellville.
At school I signalized my devotion to principle, by
refusing to share my good will or my gingerbread
with boys of the opposite party; and many are the
battles I fought in vindication of the wisdom, purity,
and consistency of the Honourable Peleg, my worthy
guardian, who, I verily believe even to this day,
was an honest politician till the age of forty.
After that, I will not answer for any man, not even
my own guardian. The prime object of my antipathy
was a lad of the name of Redfield, a gay,
careless, sprightly, mercurial genius, who always professed
to belong to no party, and whom I for that
reason considered utterly destitute of all principle.
Several times I attempted to beat principle into him;
but he had the obstinacy of a puritan and the boldness
was that I was the champion of principle, and
must not be discouraged.
At the time I am speaking of, parties were at the
height of contention, and the demons of discord, in
the disguise of two editors of party newspapers,
flapped their sooty wings over the little state. There
was a great contest of principle, on the decision of
which depended the very existence of the liberties,
not only of our little state, but of the whole union.
I never could find out what this principle was exactly;
but it turned on the question, whether a certain
bridge about to be built should be a free bridge
or a toll bridge. The whole state divided on this
great question of principle. The Honourable Peleg
Peshell was at the head of the free bridge, on
which depended the great arch of our political union;
and the Honourable Dibble Dibblee, whose principles
were always exactly opposite, forthwith took the
field as leader of the toll bridge party. The Honourable
Peleg declared it was against his principles
to pay toll; and the Honourable Dibble Dibblee
found it equally against his principles to apply any
part of his money to building a bridge which was to
bring him nothing in return. Both sides accused
the other of being governed by interested motives.
Such is the injustice of party feelings! There was
a Tertium quid party, growling in an undertone,
which was opposed to having any bridge at all, upon
the principle, that as it would be no advantage
was their interest to oppose the whole affair. The
leader of this party was the Honourable Tobias
Dob, a ruling elder of the principal church in
Dobsboroughvilleton.
The fate of a pending election rested on this
bridge, and the fate of the bridge rested on the
election. The principle to be decided was one on
which the liberties of the whole confederation depended.
Is it therefore to be wondered at, that the
good people of our patriotic state should consider
the destinies of the world and the future welfare of
all mankind as mainly depending on the decision of
this great question? or can we be surprised, if, in a
contest for such momentous principles, affecting not
only the present age but all posterity, the passions of
men should be excited, and all the charities of life
forgotten, in this vital struggle for the human race,
present and to come? Heavens! how our political
puddle did foam, and swell, and lash its sides, and
blow up bubbles, and disturb the sleepy serenity of
the worms inhabiting its precincts!
On the day of election, each party took the field,
under its own appropriate banner. The party of
the Honourable Peleg Peshell had for its motto,
“Principle not Interest;” that of the Honourable
Dibble Dibblee, “Interest not Principle;” and the
Honourable Tobias Dob paraded his Tertium quids
under that of “Principle and Interest.” Here was
room enough, and reason enough too, in all conscience,
splendid part; and, accordingly, had the ancestors
of the different parties been fighting from the
creation of the world, their posterity could not have
hated each other as did my worthy fellow-citizens,
for the time being. They abused each other by
word of mouth; they published handbills and caricatures;
and such was the disruption of the social
principle, that the adherents of the Honourable
Peleg Peshell passed a unanimous resolution to
abstain from visiting the tavern of the Honourable
Dibble Dibblee, from that time forward. The friends
of the Honourable Dibble retorted upon those of the
Honourable Peleg, by passing a unanimous resolution,
not to buy any thing at his cash-store; and
the Tertium quids also passed a resolution, that
“Whereas all men are born free and equal, and
whereas the liberty of speech and action is the unalienable
right of all men, therefore resolved unanimously,
that the Honourable Peleg Peshell is a fool;
the Honourable Dibble Dibblee, a rogue; and the
Honourable Tobias Dob a man to whom the age has
produced few equals and no superior.
(Signed) “Upright Primm, Moderator.”
The Honourable Peleg had unfortunately broken
the bridge of his nose in early life, and the
breach had never been properly repaired. His
adversary took advantage of him, by publishing a
caricature of a man in that unlucky predicament,
Whereupon the other party retorted, by a figure
standing under an old fashioned sign-post, (which
every body knows marvellously resembles a gallows,)
with a label bearing the following posey: “Hang
all republicans! I'm for the publican party—huzza!
give us a sling.” The Honourable Tobias would
have inflicted a caricature also upon his adversaries,
but as ill luck would have it, the election fund gave
out just at the crisis. This incident gave rise to a
negotiation, in which the Honourable Dibble Dibblee
intimated an offer to treat the Tertium quids
during the remainder of the election gratis, provided
they would promise to drink moderately, and
vote for him. The Honourable Tobias found his
principles inclining a little to one side, on this occasion;
but the Honourable Peleg, having got notice
of this intrigue, took measures to bolster him up
again, by proposing a coalition. He offered to
make the Honourable Tobias a judge of the superior
court, with a salary of sixty dollars, if he would
bring over his Tertium quids. Tobias—I beg pardon—the
Honourable Tobias Dob balanced for a
moment between the vital principle of benefiting
his friends, and the vital principle of benefiting
himself. After a sore struggle, the latter prevailed,
and the Honourable Peleg Peshell was elected governor.
His friends pronounced it the greatest
triumph of principle that had ever been achieved
upon earth; but truth obliges me to say, the friends
opponents with the opprobrium of a corrupt coalition.
To be even with them, the friends of the
Honourable Peleg denounced the others as a corrupt
combination. Thenceforward the question of
toll and no toll was swallowed up in the great principle
involved in the question of coalition and combination.
The Tertium quids, who still kept together
for the purpose of selling themselves again
to the highest bidder, insisted there was no difference
between a coalition and a combination, and
therefore they would join neither. “You are mistaken,”
said my old schoolmate and antagonist,
Redfield, “you are mistaken; there is all the difference
in the world. A coalition is a combination
of honest men, to get into office; and a combination
is a coalition of honest men, to get them out. They
are no more alike than a salamander and a bull-frog;
they inhabit the opposite elements.”
It was in this contest that I first brought the
principles I had imbibed from the conversation and
example of my worthy guardian, into practical operation.
Young and inexperienced as I was, I most
firmly believed that the Honourable Peleg Peshell
was the most honest as well as capable man in the
state; that it depended in a great measure on his
election, whether freedom or slavery should predominate
in the world; and consequently that those
who opposed him must be devoid of principle as well
as patriotism. It was one of the maxims of the
to yield to one great principle, by which the life of
every great man should be governed. Once convinced
that the safety or welfare of a nation or a
community depended on the success of a party
struggle, it was not only justifiable, but an inflexible
duty, to sacrifice all other duties and obligations to
the attainment of the great object. If it happened
that our individual interest or advancement was
connected with, or dependent on, the triumph of the
great principle, so much the better; we could kill
two birds with one stone, and not only save our
country, but provide for our families at the same
time. The Honourable Peleg was a great man,
and my guardian; his opinions and example could
therefore hardly fail of having a vast influence on
mine.
When this vital struggle about toll or no toll,
which was to settle the great principle on which depended
the liberties of ourselves and our posterity,
commenced, my guardian hinted to me that now
was the time to gain immortal glory, by assisting in
the salvation of my country. I begged to be put in
the way of achieving this great service.
“There is my neighbour Brookfield, whose influence
is considerable. He supports my enemies
and the enemies of the great principle on which the
salvation of the country depends. I want to destroy
that influence.”
“Very well, sir. Shall I attack his opinions in
the public papers?”
“Attack his opinions! attack a fiddlestick, Oakford.
You may as well fight with a shadow. No,
no; attack him personally, cut up his moral character;
that is the way, boy. Even people that
have no morals themselves are very tenacious of the
morals of others.”
“But, sir, I know nothing of the morals of Mr.
Brookfield, but what is greatly to his credit. I
can't in conscience publish or utter any thing against
his character. His opinions”—
“Pish! opinions! opinions are nothing, unless
they grow into actions. You must make him out to
be a great rogue, or I shall lose my election.”
“I can't, sir; it goes against my conscience.”
“Conscience! what has conscience to do with
principle? You would sacrifice the liberties of your
country and the happiness of unborn millions to a
scruple of conscience. Ah! George, you will never
make a politician.”
“But, sir, Mr. Brookfield is my friend; I have
visited at his house almost every day for the last two
years; and he and his family have treated me like
one of themselves. It would be ungrateful.”
“And so,” said the Honourable Peleg, with a
sneer, “and so you would place your own private,
and personal, and, let me say, selfish feelings in
opposition to a great principle, on which the salvation
of your country depends.”
“But, sir, by attacking the moral character of
Mr. Brookfield, I should not only injure his own
feelings, but perhaps destroy the happiness of his
wife and daughter, who are innocent of all offence
against you.”
“Ah! George; I see how it is; you are smitten
with Miss Deliverance Brookfield, and would sacrifice
a great principle to a little selfish consideration
of your own. I must make a tailor of you; you'll
never do for a politician.”
The Honourable Peleg left me to consider of the
matter. It was a sore struggle, but at last principle
triumphed, and I determined most heroically to
sacrifice all petty, personal, and interested considerations
to the salvation of my country. My
guardian furnished me with certain hints, on which
I exercised my genius, in the composition of a most
atrocious libel.
“It wont do,” said the Honourable Peleg; “it
will lay you open to a prosecution for a libel.”
“Well, what of that, sir? I am willing to encounter
any peril for the salvation of my country.”
“Yes,” said my guardian, after some hesitation,
“yes; but there is no occasion to risk your fortune
for the purpose. The salvation of the country don't
depend on money, but principle. You are about to
become a patriot; and a rich patriot has always
more influence than a poor one: you must therefore
keep your money for the salvation of the country.”
My commerce with mankind has since taught me
entirely founded on experience. Hence it is, that
so few men go right in the first affair they undertake.
It did not occur to me at the time, that, as I was
under age, the Honourable Peleg would have been
responsible for the libel, had it been published. Be
this as it may, I resigned my first literary offspring
into the hands of my guardian, who softened it down
into hints, inuendoes, and interrogations, and converted
it into one of the most mischievous yet legally
innocent instruments of torment ever seen in or out
of the Inquisition. The article appeared in the
Banner of Truth, our paper; and was followed up,
from time to time, with others still more cruelly
unintelligible, but at the same time calculated, by
their very mystery, to do the more mischief. There
was no direct charge; of course there could be no
refutation. My conscience goaded me day and
night. I had not the face to visit our neighbour
any more, after thus wounding his feelings; and
this squeamishness, as the Honourable Peleg told
me, was another proof that I would never make a
great politician. I sometimes ventured to look at
the family at church, where the grave depression of
Mr. Brookfield, and the paleness of his wife and
daughter, went to my heart. But this feeling of
compunction subsided at length into one of lofty
triumph, that I had sacrificed my early feelings and
associations, my selfish considerations, to principle.
One day I met Deliverance Brookfield, by
in childhood, and walked together in youth.
She turned her head the other way, and was passing
me without notice. The sense of offending guilt
overcame for a moment the sublime theory of the
Honourable Peleg, and I involuntarily exclaimed,
“Miss Brookfield!”
She turned upon me a countenance at once pale
and beautiful, but tinged deeply with melancholy
reproach, as she looked steadily in my face without
speaking.
“Have you forgot me, Miss Brookfield?”
“I believe I have,” at length she replied in a sad
kind of languor. “I would never wish to remember
one who has repaid the friendship of my father,
and the kindness of my mother, by destroying our
happiness.”
I felt like a scoundrel, but mustered hypocrisy
enough to answer in a gay tone,
“My dear Miss Brookfield, nobody thinks any
thing of such trifles in politics; nothing but political
squibs—forgot in a day—they do no harm to any
one.”
“None,” she replied bitterly; “no harm except
murdering reputations and breaking hearts. My
father is dying.” And she burst into tears.
“Dying!” cried I, “Heaven forbid! of what?”
“Of the wounds you have given him. O George,
George! continued she, “you should come to our
house, and receive a lesson of what a few slanders
family.”
She passed on, and I had not courage to stop, or
to follow her. I went to the honourable Peleg, and
gave him notice, that it was my intention to retract
all I had said or insinuated against Mr. Brookfield,
in the next day's Banner of Truth.
“And lose me my election—I mean sacrifice a great
principle, and jeopardize the happiness of millions to
a little private feeling of compunction?”
“I cannot bear the stings of conscience.”
“My dear George—you, and such inexperienced
young fellows as yourself, are for ever mistaking the
painful efforts which are necessary to the attainment
of a high degree of public virtue, for the stings of
conscience. If the practice of virtue was not attained
by great sacrifices of feeling and inclination,
there would be little merit in being virtuous. What
if you have destroyed the temporary happiness of
two or three people, provided you have ensured the
triumph of a great principle, and the salvation of
your country? It is the noble, the exalted, the disinterested
sacrifice of private inclinations, and social
feelings to public duty. Did not Brutus condemn
his only son?”
“Yes, but he did not calumniate his mother and
sisters.”
“The greater the sacrifice to public principles,
the greater the glory and reward. The election
blow.”
As it is my design to make my story as useful to
the rising generation of politicians as possible, I
mean to disclose myself without disguise or reservation.
I did let slip another shaft against poor Brookfield,
which probably accelerated his progress to the
grave, and deprived my kind friend and my pretty
playmate of a husband and a father. I would not
confess this hateful fact, could I not lay my hand at
this moment on my heart, look in the face of Heaven
and man, and say, that at the moment of inflicting
a death wound on the happiness of those who had
been to me as a mother, a father, and sister, I had
convinced myself I was sacrificing a narrow, selfish
feeling to an enlarged and universal principle of
virtuous patriotism. Poor Brookfield died a few
days after the election; but the honourable Peleg
Peshell gained the victory; and a domestic calamity
was not, as he assured me, to be weighed for a
moment against the triumph of a great principle,
and the salvation of millions of people yet unborn.
Brookfield was no more; his family was destitute;
his widow heart broken; his daughter without a
protector; and his little son, of about ten years old,
left upon the world. But what of that? The great
principle had triumphed; the oppression of toll
bridges was prevented; and the honourable Peleg
Peshell was governor of a little state containing more
banks and more great men, than any state of its
dollars a year, and the power to do nothing, but consent
to the acts of other people.
From this time forward, I became the confidential
friend and adviser of the great governor of the little
state, commander of an army and admiral of a navy
that had no existence; who had five hundred dollars
a year, with the title of excellency, the privilege
of doing nothing of his own free will, and franking
letters. The Lord have mercy on a little man, who
becomes the confidential friend and adviser of a
great man. He will be obliged to do for him, what
he is ashamed to do for himself; to take all the blame
of giving bad, and relinquish all the credit of good
counsel; to fetch, and carry, and say, and gainsay,
and unsay; to prostitute his soul to unutterable meannesses,
and turn the divinity of conscience into a
crouching spaniel, obeying every look, wagging his
tail in gratitude for kicks, and licking the hand that
lugs the ears from his head. I speak from awful experience,
for never little man was rode and spurred,
over hill, dale, and common, through ditch, swamp,
and horsepond, as I was by that illustrious patriot
the Honourable Peleg Peshell—I beg pardon—his
Excellency, the Honourable Peleg Peshell, Esquire.
But I will do his Excellency the justice to say, that
he did every thing upon principle, and for the salvation
of unborn millions. Life, would he say, is a
warfare of conflicting duties, and opposing principles;
a choice of evils, or a choice of goods. It is
nearest and the most distant, but between the greater
and the lesser obligation.
“But,” said I modestly—for by this time, such is
the magic of dependence on great men, I had come
to look upon his Excellency as an oracle irrefragable;
“But,” said I,” suppose one man was holding a
red hot poker to your nose, while another was calling
upon you to establish a great principle, would
not you attend to the poker before the principle?”
“Certainly I would, sir—” His Excellency never
of late called me sir, but when he was a little out of
humour—“Certainly, sir; but it would be only in
compliment to the weakness of human nature; for
nothing is more certain than that it would be my
duty to let the poker burn up my nose, rather than
miss the opportunity of benefiting future ages, by
the establishment of a great political principle.”
“But will your Excellency permit me to ask how
you ascertain to a certainty that a great political
principle is right, when perhaps one half of mankind
think it wrong?”
“Why, sir, my own reason and experience teach
me.”
“But another's man reason and experience teach
him directly the contrary.”
“Then he must be either a great blockhead, or a
great knave,” replied the Honourable—I mean his
Excellency the Honourable Peleg Peshell, in a tone
that precluded farther questioning.
It was many years afterwards that I perceived the
fallacy of thus raising up an idol, which while one man
worshipped another abhorred, and sacrificing to it
the eternal and immutable attributes of justice and
truth, about which there can be no difference of
opinion. It was only long experience and reflection
that convinced me at last, that the sacrifice of moral
and social duties, to mere opinions, elevated to the
dignity of great and established principles, about
which all mankind differ, must be fatal in the end,
not only to the morals of mankind, but to that freedom
whose only foundation is based upon them. I
received the responses of his Excellency with profound
submission, and continued to act upon them in
a long series of political servitude.
About a year after the great triumph of principle,
which resulted in the choice of his Excellency the
Honourable Peleg Peshell for Governor of the little
state, with such a plenty of banks and great men, I
came of age, and it was proper for his Excellency
to give an account of the administration of my affairs.
He put me off from day to day, month to
month, year to year, until my patience was quite
worn out. At length, finding it impossible any longer
to satisfy me with excuses, he one day addressed me
as follows:
“My dear young friend, it is not to be supposed,
that a man whose whole soul is taken up with his
public, can pay proper attention to his private duties.
Whenever these come in conflict with each other, it is
beggar himself, for the salvation of unborn millions.
I cannot tell exactly how it happened, but your fortune
is gone; either I have spent it myself, by mistake,
in the hurry of my public duties, or some one
else has spent it for me. However, this cannot be
of much consequence, since the great principle has
triumphed, and the salvation of the country is secured
beyond all future hazard. Remember how Brutus
the elder sacrificed his son, as an example to the Roman
militia, and console yourself with the certainty
that you have devoted your fortune to the establishment
of a great principle.”
This reasoning, though it had always proved satisfactory
when applied to the affairs of other people,
did not exactly relish to my understanding in the present
case. It occurred to me that though a man
might honestly sacrifice his own fortune to the establishment
of a great principle, he had no right to
take the same liberty with that of another, intrusted
to his management. I took the freedom to hint
something of this sort.
“Pshaw! George,” replied his Excellency, “you
will never make a great patriot I'm afraid. Is not
the major greater than the minor?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Is not a community greater than an individual?”
“Assuredly, sir.”
“Is not the good of the whole, the good of all its
parts?”
“Clearly, sir.”
“Well sir! is not the establishment of a great
principle, on which depends the happiness of millions,
of far more moment than the temporary inconvenience
you will feel from the loss of your fortune?”
“Certainly, sir,” said I very faintly.
“Good—I believe I shall make something of you
at last. You are worthy of the confidence of your
fellow-citizens. Now listen to me. Another election
is coming on, which involves another great
principle, on which depends the salvation of the
country, and the happiness of unborn millions. A
great state road is to be laid out by the next legislature,
and I have it from the very best hand, that if we
do not exert ourselves, it will be carried over a part
of the country so distant from my property, and that
of my best friends, as to do us rather an injury than
a benefit. Now, though I am interested in this business,
that is my misfortune. It is the great principle
dependent upon the decision of the question that
I am solicitous to vindicate. My intention is to get
you into the legislature, provided you will pledge
yourself to stand in the breach, and prevent the destruction
of our liberties, which mainly depend upon
the great principle involved in this road bill. What say
you, will you pledge yourself to your constituents?”
“Why sir—if—”
“O none of your ifs, George—you'll never make
a great politician if you stumble before an if.”
“But my conscience, sir.”
“Your conscience!” cried his Excellency the
Honourable Peleg—“Conscience! who ever heard
of a representative of the people having a conscience?
Why sir, his conscience belongs to his constituents,
who think for him, and decide for him.
One half the time it is his duty to act in the very
teeth of his conscience. He is only the whistle on
which the people blow any tune they please.”
“It appears to me, sir, that this doctrine is rather
immoral.”
“Immoral!” cried his Excellency, throwing himself
back in his chair, and laughing; “immoral!
what has morality to do with the establishment of a
great principle? I ought to have made a tailor of
you, I see.”
“Lookee, George,” continued his Excellency,
after he had laughed himself out, “every young
man who devotes himself to political life, must in
the outset, if he wishes to be successful, surrender
his opinions and feelings entirely to the establishment
of certain great radical principles. He must
have neither morals nor conscience. All he has to
do is to inquire whether a thing is necessary to the
establishment of these principles, and do it as a matter
of course, although abstractedly and in itself it
may be in the teeth of law and gospel. For instance,
George—why, you are looking at that pretty
will never make a politician.”
I begged his Excellency's pardon, and he proceeded.
“For instance, suppose you were, like myself, in
a high official situation, and were solicited by two
persons to do two things directly opposite in their
nature and consequences; what would you do?
“I would inquire into the matter, ascertain, if
possible, which was right, and act accordingly.”
“You would! Then let me tell you, sir, you
would soon be sent to raise cabbages and pumpkins
on your farm. No, sir, your duty would be to inquire
and ascertain whether the great principle on
which depended your remaining in office, would be
best sustained by complying with the wishes of one
or other of the persons soliciting your interest.
Having found this out, there would be no further
difficulty in the matter. You would of course decide
upon principle.”
“Principle, sir! why really, excuse me, your Excellency,
but this is what the country farmers call
being governed by interest, not principle.”
“Pooh, George! your head is not longer than a
pin's; can you comprehend a syllogism?”
“I believe so, sir, if it has a sufficiency of legs.”
“Very well,” continued his Excellency, “certain
principles are essentially necessary to the salvation
of the state and the happiness of unborn millions.
I advocate these principles; ergo, it is necessary to
millions, that I should be chosen governor,
and reward those who chose me, as far as it may be
in my power. Now, sir, as to my own personal
interests; here is the point in which the talents of a
great man are most essentially tested; I mean in
making his interests and his principles harmonize
with each other. If he can do this he is fit to govern
the whole universe; if not, he is fit for nothing
but a mechanic; for how can it be supposed that a
man can take care of the interests of other people
who neglects his own?”
The logic of his Excellency the Honourable Peleg
Peshell, Esquire, was conclusive, and I agreed to
vote against my conscience, for the good of my
country, if necessary; after which, I sallied forth
and overtook the pretty Silence Parley. It was a
delightful summer afternoon, or rather evening, for
the twilight had put on its cloak of gray obscurity,
and we walked along the hard white sand of the
quiet bay, arm in arm, sometimes talking and sometimes
looking at one another in luscious meditation.
She was worth a description; but my story is one
of principle, and I shall dwell on such trifles as love
and woman, only so far as is necessary to my purpose.
After I had sacrificed my kind friend and
neighbour Brookfield and his family on the altar of
principle, I never could bear to look Deliverance in
the face again. Indeed the mother soon after carried
her family to her friends in a distant part of the
Brookfield, Miss Silence Parley was the
fairest of our maidens, who all were fair, if rosy
cheeks, round glowing figures, and sky clear eyes,
could make them so. She was likely to be an heiress
too; and the Honourable Peleg hinted to me
one day, that it would marvellously conduce to the
triumph of a great principle, if I could win and
wear her.
“For,” said he, “her father is a man of a good
deal of political influence, which he does not choose
to exert, being one of those selfish blockheads who
prefer peace and quiet to the salvation of unborn
millions. If you could marry his daughter, I dare
say he would come out in favour of the great principle.”
This time, for a great wonder, I think, for it is
the only time it ever happened to me in all my subsequent
career, this time my principles chimed in
with my interests, and I determined, if possible, to
charm the fair Silence into speaking to the purpose.
We were often together alone in the modest, humble
twilight, walking and talking, or sitting and silent.
We exchanged looks and little civilities, that spoke
expressive meanings; and, in short, it was not long
before I saw in the eyes of my pretty Silence the
signal of surrender. I had not actually offered myself,
but I had determined upon it; when the election
approached near at hand, on which depended the
great principle, whether the great state road should
Dibblee, Esq. innkeeper of Dibbleeville, or of his
Excellency the Honourable Peleg Peshell, Esquire,
cash storekeeper at Peshellville, and consequently
the salvation of unborn millions.
His Excellency the Honourable Peleg one day
took occasion to hint to me, that it might be as well
to sound the Honourable Peabody Parley, Esquire,
the father of my pretty Silence, as to his using his
influence in my behalf in the coming struggle of
principle.
“I had better ask his consent to marry his daughter
first,” said I.
“No, sir, you had better ask for his support first,”
replied his Excellency, peremptorily.
Accordingly I went to the Honourable Peabody
Parley; there were as many Honourables in our little
state as hidalgos in Spain; I went and asked his
support in attaining the high honour of being elected
a member of the legislature in the coming contest
of principle. The Honourable Peabody told
me frankly he would do no such thing, unless
I pledged myself to vote and use all my influence
in getting the great state road laid out so as
to run through a part of his property, where he was
going to found a great city. This was in direct
opposition to the great principle of the Honourable
Peleg Peshell, whose property lay in the other extreme
of the state. I required time for consideration,
his head and was angry.
“You must go and pay your addresses to Miss
Welcome Hussey Bashaba, daughter to the Honourable
Jupiter Ammon Deodatus Bumstead, of Bumsteadvilleton,
as soon as possible.”
“But, sir, Miss Hussey Bashaba is as ugly as a
stone fence, with a flounce and fashionable bonnet
on it.”
“No matter, the safety of the country and the
salvation of unborn millions depend on it.”
“But, I am all but engaged to Miss Silence Parley;
I have committed myself.”
“No matter, the triumph of principle will be the
greater.”
“How so, sir?” replied I, rather perplexed at this
mystery.
“How so; why the Honourable Mr. Bumstead
is the proprietor of a manufactory, which can turn
out votes enough to carry the election. You must
be off at once, for the great contest of principle approaches.”
I mounted my horse, after a sore struggle between
my heart and the great political principle, and proceeded
towards the stately shingle palace of my intended
father-in-law, to visit my intended, the redoubtable
Miss Welcome Hussey Bashaba Bumstead, the
daughter, the only daughter of the Honourable Jupiter
Ammon Deodatus Bumstead, of Bumsteadvilleton,
the best manufacturing seat in the state,
politician, and withal a most unprincipled quadruped,
stopped stock still at the gate which led to the
abode of Miss Silence Parley. She was standing
on the piazza, looking like a rosy sylph, expecting
me, for she had seen me afar off. My horse was
obstinate, and though I confess I pricked him on violently
with my spurs, I held the rein so tight that he
could do nothing but rear. This frightened my pretty
Silence, who screamed, and ran to open the gate.
She begged me to dismount and lead my horse in.
“I cannot just now,” said I, in a sneaking, snivelling
tone; “I am going on to Bumsteadvilleton
just now.”
“To see Miss Hussey Bashaba?” said she, with
a mischievous smile of meaning, for Miss Hussey
was the reigning she-dragon of the whole county.
“No,” said I, with the face of a robber of a hen-roost;
“no, I'm going to buy some cotton shirting.”
I could stand it no longer; I clapped spurs to my
horse—she waved her lily hand, whiter than snow,
and I was out of sight in a minute. It was the greatest
triumph of principle I ever achieved.
The Honourable Jupiter Ammon Deodatus received
me as he would one of his best customers;
and Miss Hussey Bashaba smiled upon me like a
roaring lion. There is one great comfort in addressing
an exemplary ugly woman; she don't require
much wooing, provided she is a reasonable
in cases of this kind. The Honourable Jupiter
Ammon promised me his support, and I promised to
take his daughter. We were married in a week.
The Honourable Jupiter Ammon brought out his
two hundred ragamuffins, all men of clear estate, if
not freeholders. I was elected by a handsome majority;
and again the triumph of principle, on which
depended the salvation of unborn millions, was completed,
at the trifling expense of the mere sacrifice
of a few insignificant moralities, of no consequence
but to the owner.
The collected wisdom of the state, of which I
formed one twentieth part at least, met in good time.
His Excellency the Honourable Peleg Peshell delivered
a speech to both Houses, in which he took a
rapid view of the creation of the world; man in a
state of nature—the want of principle in the opposition—the
profligacy of certain leading politicians
—recommended a loan, six canals, nine rail roads,
and seventeen banks—and concluded with a touch
of piety, that brought tears into our eyes, as he
thanked Heaven for having achieved this last great
triumph of principle.
The whole Assembly was divided, as usual, on a
great principle different from that on which the famous
toll bridge rested. The great question on
which the great principle was based, on which the
salvation of unborn millions depended, was whether
the great state road was to diverge fifteen degrees
minutes east northeast. Such is the influence
of propinquity in questions of this sort, that it exercised
complete sway on this occasion. In proportion
as a member had a propinquity towards the
west line, or the east, precisely in the same degree
did the great fundamental principle which governed
his actions incline in that direction; and so intimate
was the association between principle and interest,
that had I not actually known to the contrary by my
own experience, I should have supposed they were
one and the same thing. But there were little minor
principles operating in subordination to that of the
great state road. One member, for example, was
principled against voting for any state road at all,
unless the friends of the road would vote for his
canal. Another would not so far prostitute his principles
as to vote for the canal, unless the friends of
the canal would support his application for a bank.
In the end, finding the principles of the members to
be absolutely incompatible, we hit upon an arrangement,
which was perfectly satisfactory to the
most tender conscience, and came up to the great
principle by which every member was governed.
The proposition was moved by myself, at the suggestion
of his Excellency the Honourable Peleg
Peshell, Esquire, Governor and Captain General of
the little state with so many banks and great men.
My plan was no other than to jumble roads, canals,
and banks, all together in one bill, by which the principles,
ples quieted for ever. After amending the proposition,
at the instance of a philanthropist, by a donation of
five hundred dollars to the society for the prevention
of tippling, the whole was rolled through triumphantly.
Every body's principles were quieted, and
every man had lent a hand to the salvation of unborn
millions. Such is the magic of public virtue! There
were scarcely half a dozen members agreeing in the
first instance, yet such was the spirit of friendly compromise,
that in the end every member without exception,
but one, voted for the bill solely on the
score of principle—of doing as he would be done
unto. The only dissentient was a member, who so
far forgot his duty to his country as to come there
without a project for her benefit. Having nothing
to ask, he was unwilling to give any thing away,
and voted against my proposition.
It was on this occasion I delivered my maiden
speech. Public expectation was on tiptoe; the boys
climbed up to the windows of the state house; the
ladies of the Honourable Abel Rooney, the Honourable
Peartree Brombush, and of the Honourable
Roger Pegg, with their twenty-seven blooming and
marriageable daughters, seated themselves in front
of the gallery; and the Speaker cried silence, and
rattled his hammer so that his tobacco box bounced
off the table. I was penetrated with the justice of
my cause, the great principle involved in the question,
and the dignity of my auditory. I began:
“Sir-r-r!
“If I possessed the power to flash conviction,
as the lightning does upon the bosom of the
thunder cloud, redundant with fire and brimstone:
Sir-r-r, if I could wrest from the sceptre—I mean, if
I could wrest the sceptre from reason, and rob the
spheres of the music of their voices: Sir-r-r, if I
could, by any effort of this feeble hand and tremulous
body, pour the tremendous and overwhelming
flood of conviction like a wall of adamant over your
souls, until they melted in the red hot embers of conviction:
Sir-r-r, if I could freeze your hearts till
they offered an icy barrier to the intrusion of all
selfish considerations, and reared the massy column
of their waters up to the topmost pinnacle of the
arching skies: Sir-r-r, if I could swallow up at a
single effort of my imagination, the possibility of
believing it possible that the cries of the orphan,
the bewailings of reckless and wretched poverty—
the exhortations of the halt, the dumb, and the deaf
—the mother's groans—the weeping stones—the
orphan's moans”—
Here I was interrupted by a burst of hysterical
tears from the beautiful blue eyes of the widow of
the Honourable Roger Pegg, who was carried home
in a state of suppuration. This was the greatest
triumph of eloquence ever witnessed in our state. I
cannot go through the whole of my speech. It
lasted eight hours and three quarters, and I should
and left me and my subject in outer darkness. The
reader may judge of its length from the fact, that it
was ascertained by an industrious old person, who
could not bear to be idle, that the word “Sir,” occurred
three hundred, and the monosyllable “I,”
five hundred times—the word “principle,” six hundred
and thirty, and the word “interest,” not once.
Can there be any higher proof of the purity of my
motives? The next day the Banner of Truth published
my speech, of which I had given a copy
beforehand, pronouncing it at the same time superior
to the best efforts of the three great orators of
antiquity, Marcus, Tullius, and Cicero.
I was now fairly launched upon the billows of
immortal glory—so said the Banner of Truth. The
little state rung with my exploit, as if it had been a
second victory of New Orleans, and people began
to talk of me for Congress. The Honourable
George Gregory Oakford (for I too had become
Honourable) was the luminary of the age; and his
rising importance was indicated by divers worthy
persons, such as men out of employ, or who
had made a bad bankruptcy for themselves; and
young gentlemen, too idle for useful employment,
and too poor to figure without it, paying him most
particular devoirs, and hanging to his skirts, like so
many cockles. All these were impelled by an instinctive
perception, such as animates the canine
who hath a bone to throw away.
But though a great man myself, there were still
greater men than I in `our town.' I mean the
members of the general committees; the nominating
committees; and greatest of all, the gentlemen
who give the impulse, and govern the course of
the current by a certain mysterious influence, as inscrutable
as that which gives a direction to the
winds. Though the study and experience of a
whole life, has pretty well initiated me into the depths
of political alchymy, I confess I could never fathom
the obscurity of this part of the science. I
could never reach the head of the tide, though I
floated on its surface so long; nor have I ever to
this day had a clear perception of the means, by
which certain dull, stupid men, often without a tolerable
reputation, and destitute of wealth, contrive
to lead the people as they do, and keep the great
leaders themselves, in most abject subjection. It
may be, that the majority of mankind are wise
enough to know that those who are most on a
par with them, and mix the most familiarly in their
daily concerns, whose interests are in fact identified
with their own, are their best and safest counsellors,
and that thus, after all, the popularity of a great
man is derived not so much from the splendour of
his actions, as from the secret influence of very ordinary
men, over their friends and neighbours.
As the triumph of a great principle and the salvation
of unborn millions depended so materially
upon the predominancy of the party to which I had
become attached, I did not consider myself above
courting these masters of the people by every means
in my power. I sought them out at their employments,
talked politics with them, or rather heard
them talk, which is by much the more infallible
mode, and agreed with them whenever I could find
out what they meant. I brought one of these, an
honest shoemaker, nearly to the brink of starvation,
by causing him to neglect his business from day to
day, in discussing the eternal, invariable principles,
which governed toll bridges and turnpike roads. I
invited these worthy men, for worthy and well meaning
men a great many of them were, to my house,
and hinted to Mrs. Hussey Bashaba Oakford the
propriety of drinking tea with their wives, socially,
and asking them in return. But Mrs. Hussey Bashaba
was one of those unreasonable women that
boast of being mistress of their own houses. She
was to be sure no beauty, but she was an heiress, in
perspective at least, though as yet her only dowry
had been the two hundred votes of the ragamuffin
freeholders, a dozen table and tea spoons, and a looking-glass.
But she had mighty expectations, and
acted accordingly.
My wife treated the committee men with sour
looks from one of the ugliest faces in the state, and
contrived so many ingenious ways to make them
of the honest gentlemen by accident spilled the ashes
from his pipe on the hearth, Mrs. Bashaba would
jump up extempore, seize the brush, and exercise it
with a most significant and irritable vivacity. If
another chanced to bring in a small tribute from
mother Earth, upon his independent and sovereign
shoes, she would forthwith ask me, with a peculiar
emphasis, whether the scraper had been stolen from the
door. But woe to the committee man who dared,
by any lapsus lingua, to expectorate on the floor!
Mrs. Hussey Bashaba would scream for the help to
come with a tub of water and a brush, and set her
scrubbing away before the good man's face. As to
the good wives of the committee, they came once,
and once only. Mrs. Bashaba talked all the time about
her papa's house, factory, work people, and all that,
and made such a display of importance that they never
came near us again. To one she said, “What a
pity it is you can't afford to put new panes of glass in
your broken windows!” To another, “How sorry I
am, my dear Mrs. Applepie, your husband is not
rich enough to build a new house! Are you not
afraid it will fall down one of these days? For my
part, I shouldn't be able to sleep a wink in it.”
And to a third, “La, my dear Mrs. Birdseye, when
did you lose those two front teeth? I declare it
makes you look twenty years older.” The committee
men and their wives went home all in a
huff with myself and my better half.
“My dear,” said I, soothingly, “you have endangered
the success of a great principle, and the
salvation of unborn millions.”
“The salvation of a fiddlestick!” said Mrs. Bashaba,
“I can't bear such vulgar people. Why
they eat out of trenchers, and use wooden spoons,
like pigs.”
“I never heard that pigs used wooden spoons,”
said I, innocently.
“You never heard! Huh! of what consequence
is it what you have heard? People brought up
in a pigstye seldom have an ear for music,” said
Mrs. Bashaba, as she proceeded to blow the dust
off the chairs and tables with her aromatic breath.
My wife was certainly right in valuing herself on
her breeding.
The untoward behaviour of Mrs. Bashaba had
well nigh jeopardized the great principle, and destroyed
the hopes of posterity. A fortunate accident,
or perhaps a providential interposition, prevented
the woful catastrophe. This was the stoppage
of a bank in a remote corner of the state; but
which, distant as it was, exercised a vast influence
on the affairs of distant people. This moneyed institution,
having no capital, had borrowed the stock
of another moneyed institution, in the like predicament,
and secured the capital thus paid in by a similar
loan of its own stock. They then both fell to
issuing bills like wildfire, and lending money—
the ghost of a security. My worthy father-in-law,
the Honourable Jupiter Ammon Bumstead, was one
of these shadows, which became a substance by the
magic operation of modern financiering. He borrowed
money, built a manufactory of coarse cottons,
and a town, which he called Bumsteadvilleton, together
with a shingle palace of infinite dimensions.
The twin sister banks got on very well for a time,
by redeeming the notes of one of the sisters with the
notes of the other. The Cow and Grass Company
paid the notes of the Wool and Comb Company,
like a good sister, and thus they mutually supported
each other in the journey of life. At last, however,
some malicious and unreasonable person made a
demand of three hundred dollars in silver. The
Cow and Grass offered the notes of the Wool and
Comb, but it would not do; the Cow and Grass fell
against the Wool and Comb, the Wool and Comb
against the establishment of Bumsteadvilleton, and
the Honourable Mr. Bumstead returned to his original
shadow again. It was the old story of the
boy that bought the pig. `The butcher began to
kill the ox, the ox began to drink the water, the
water to quench the fire, the fire to burn the stick,
the stick to lick the pig,' and the pig at last went to
school, but without being a whit the wiser. The
President of the Cow and Grass, who was a member
of the legislature, in a paroxysm of indignation,
moved that the bills of both these moneyed institutions
should be burnt. Another member moved to
“presidents, cashiers, and directors.” Among all
the members of our Honourable body, there was but
one man—the mover of the amendment—that was
not either president or director of some bank. The
amendment was voted down unanimously; the great
principle of banking triumphed, and the salvation of
unborn millions was placed upon the eternal basis of
paper money. On this occasion I made another
speech, which would have convinced every member
present, but one, had they not been convinced already.
If the reader is a tolerable politician he
will know that there are two kinds of speeches—one
for the people within, the other for the people without.
The latter are by far the most numerous.
This failure of the Cow and Grass, was the
luckiest incident of my life. Ninety-nine in a hundred
of the people of our state, were dependent on
the banks in some way or other, either as debtors or
stockholders. My speech in favour of the great
principle of banking, gained all their hearts. The
total ruin of my Honourable father-in-law, actually,
for a time, made a reasonable woman of my wife,
and caused her to treat the ladies of the committee
men with vast courtesy. The ladies of the committee
men, began to pity poor Mrs. Oakford—and
pity is akin to forgiveness—and finally the consummation
of all was, that the general committee nominated
me as their candidate for congress by a majority
of one—that is to say—not being able to agree,
the two parties at length settled the great principle
my friends cinque, and the choice was announced as
a great triumph of principle over personal feelings
and private views.
Being thus triumphantly nominated by the general
committee, and endorsed by the sub-committees,
it became the duty of the people to vote for me
upon principle, though it might happen to be
against their conscience, thus magnanimously sacrificing
all private feelings and considerations to the
public good. In vain did the opposite party exclaim
against this attempt to dictate to the people;
the people turned out lustily in my favour, and
voted me in a member of congress, against their
consciences, for the sake of the great principle. His
Excellency the Honourable Peleg Peshell, Esquire,
supported me with all his influence, and I him with
all mine; not because it was our mutual interest to
do so, but because our interests were so dovetailed
into the great principle that it was next to impossible
to separate them. In the course of this contest, to
the best of my belief, I violated my conscience, and
forgot the obligations of truth, justice, honour, and
sincerity, more than a score of times; but the Honourable
Peleg, had convinced me it was my duty as
a patriot to sacrifice my duty as a man, on all occasions
when they came in conflict with each other.
“The first duty of a true patriot is to offer up his
conscience on the altar of the public good”—said
the Honourable Peleg, my mentor. I confess I winced
a little, for the idea sometimes came across me,
equally right in the great principle, and one of them
must be in error, a large portion of the people were
offering up their consciences in the wrong place. I
once propounded this doubt to the Honourable Peleg—“Pooh!”
said he, “the opposite party has no
conscience; they are wrong in the great principle,
and can be right in nothing else. A person radically
wrong in political opinions, is like a man with
a broken back, he can't walk straight for the life of
him.” I was satisfied.
I departed for the seat of government, with six
long stall-fed speeches in my portmanteau, for I was
determined to convince my constituents at least, that
they had not chosen a dummy to represent them. I
wanted to leave Mrs. Hussey Bashaba behind, but
she was a little inclined to the green-eyed monster,
and determined to share my honours. I represented
only some thirty or forty thousand citizens;
but my wife represented the whole sex; it was therefore
but just that the majority should have its way,
and she accompanied me to the scene of my future
glories. People who know nothing of the value of
a single unit, or even a single cipher, when placed in
a particular situation, can hardly conceive the importance
of a member at the seat of government,
where a series of mutual dependence pervades the
whole social system. There is hardly a hack driver,
who is not in some measure dependent on some great
man; and even the poor horses, if they could speak,
great fundamental principles. The first time I
went with my Bashaba to visit one of the foreign
minister's ladies, the horses stuck in the mud, and refused
to proceed. I scolded the hackman—“Plase
your Honour,” he was an Irishman, and all Irishmen
are patriots—“Plase your Honour, they wont
stir upon principle.”
“What do you mean?” said I.
“Plase you, they have just found out that they
are going to visit the British minister, and have made
up their minds never to pay him that honour, till the
Catholic question is settled to their satisfaction.”
The horses stuck to their principles, and stuck in
the mud. There seemed some truth in what the
driver said, for the moment he turned their heads the
other way, they trotted off gallantly towards home.
The instinct of animals sometimes nearly approaches
to the reason of some men. I was obliged to send
for horses of a different party, or more accommodating
principles.
The first time we were invited to dinner, my wife
was delighted. She was the lady of a member, and
happened to take precedence of all the rest. She
was led into the dining room by a foreign minister,
with a gold laced coat; and consumed all the next
day in writing letters to the ladies of the general
committee. The next time she was not quite so well
pleased, for there was a senator's lady present, and
Mrs. Bashaba fell to the lot of an attaché. What
lady lived in the same hotel with us, and the propinquity
made the slight intolerable. The senator's
lady was the delighted one now, and declared the
seat of government was the most charming place in
the world. There was a great coolness for several
days, on the part of Mrs. Welcome Bashaba towards
the senator's lady. The third time matters were
still worse. There was a member of the cabinet's
lady present, to whom the ambassador was pledged
by the rules of etiquette; so that the senator's lady
fell to the attaché, and Mrs. Bashaba to the lot of a
gentleman with no claim to distinction, but talents
and character. The senator's lady and the lady
of the member came home the best friends in the
world. But the latter began to be disgusted with
the seat of government, and became quite homesick.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Mrs.
Bashaba having been handed into the supper room,
at a grand gala, given by a foreign minister, in
honour of his august sovereign's birth-day, by a
clerk in the land office, insisted on going home forthwith.
Had it been a clerk in the office of the secretary
of state, or even any one of the departments, it
might have been borne. But a clerk in the land office!
it was impossible to get over the mortification. Fortunately
an old neighbour of mine, nearly fourscore,
who had come to the seat of government, with some
two or three hundred more of my constituents to get
an appointment, was going home the very next day.
sent her off before she had another chance of being
handed to dinner by a foreign minister. Previous
to her departure she exacted of me a promise to oppose
the administration, and particularly the measures
of the secretary, whose wife had taken precedence
of her at the grand supper, on all occasions.
I promised—for I would have promised any thing to
get rid of Mrs. Bashaba for the season; and I have
the great consolation of knowing that both the honourable
senator and myself voted against the administration
all the winter, upon the great principle
of etiquette, which is in fact the corner-stone of tyranny.
Being now my own man, I commenced
gallant; flirted desperately with the married dames;
and still more desperately with the young ladies, who
were delighted with the attentions of a member.
Let me warn all my readers, who are, or expect to
be members, never to bring their wives to the seat of
government. If they are handsome, they will have
all the attaches, and all the widowers pro tem. among
the members, in their train; and if they are otherwise,
unless they happen to be angels outright, their
curtain lectures will be terrible. But it is time to
return to my political career.
The first day the House met, and before a Speaker
was chosen, being resolved to lose no time in convincing
the world I was somebody, I rose to make
a motion and a speech on the subject of reform.
“Mister Speaker—Sir-r-r”—“Order!” cried the
I rise to”—“Sit down—the honourable
member is out of order, the house is not yet organized.”
An old member on my left apprised me
that as there was yet no Speaker chosen, there could
be no question debated. When the persons were
nominated for that station, I rose again, for one
of my speeches I thought would come pat to the
purpose now. As soon as the Speaker was chosen
I rose again to make my great motion on the subject
of reform—“Mister Speaker—Sir-r-r-r, the republics
of Greece and Rome”—“Mr. Speaker,” said
an old grey headed member, I am sorry to interrupt
the honourable member from—from—somewhere—
but I beg to make a motion that we proceed to appoint
a committee to wait on the President, with
information that the House is now organized, and
ready to receive any communication from him.”
“Mister Speaker, sir-r-r, I feel myself under an
awful responsibility to myself, my constituents, my
country, and the world, to oppose that motion;”
for I was a little nettled at this interruption.
“The motion is not debateable,” replied the
Speaker, mildly.
I sat down, provoked and mortified beyond measure,
for I was ready to overflow in a torrent of
eloquence. The reading of the message, and other
formalities, took up the whole morning; and the
house adjourned without hearing my speech. Thus,
like Titus, I lost a day; but I made myself all the
my chamber to two chairs, a three-legged stool, and
a chalk bust of Cicero with a broken pedestal, which
at every gesticulation I made, nodded approbation.
My next attempt at a speech on reform was quite
unpremeditated. It happened that a party of ladies
came into the gallery of the house; among them
was one with whom I was engaged in a fashionable
flirtation for the season. I wished above all things
to dazzle her with a speech; for, at the seat of government,
a speech is equivalent to gaining a great
victory by sea or land.
The moment I saw my belle in the gallery, the
fervor of eloquence seized me. Luckily at that
blessed crisis a member sat down, after a speech
of three days, apologizing to the house that exhaustion
and fatigue prevented his going deeper into
the subject. In my haste, I unfortunately began
the one of my six stall-fed speeches which of all
others least applied to the question before the house,
which related to the Cumberland road, that would
be the very best road upon earth, if speeches could
keep it in repair. My speech, which was the first of
my budget I could lay hold on, was on the occupation
of the territory of Oregon.
I set out from the seat of government without
interruption, every now and then cocking my eye at
the divinity who inspired me in the gallery; and
was puffiing and blowing about half way up the
order.
“The Honourable gentleman is not speaking to
the question. The Cumberland road does not cross
the Rocky Mountains.”
“Let the gentleman go on,” exclaimed a soft,
clear, high-toned voice, in a wicked Cervantic tone,
“let the gentleman alone; he is only making a
voyage round the world, and will certainly cross the
latitude or longitude of his subject, some time or
other.”
This sally occasioned a good deal of merriment,
and I saw the loadstar of my eloquence showing her
ivory teeth on the occasion. I became confused;
I struck in upon another of my six stall-fed speeches,
wandered from that into a third, and finally jumbled
them all together into a mass of incongruity, unutterable
and inextricable. Fortunately the Speaker,
not having above thrice the patience of Job, at
length called me to order, and I obeyed. Fortunately
too for me, the reporter, who had made more
great orations than all the orators of ancient or
modern times, not being able to take down my
speech in short hand, substituted one of his own,
which was read by my constituents with infinite
satisfaction and improvement. Shortly after this,
I made a motion to exclude the ladies from the gallery;
being convinced, from my own experience,
that they cause the effusion of more nonsense in the
house than nature ever intended men should utter.
I was at first exceedingly discouraged with my
excursion to the Rocky Mountains; but finding it
made such a splendid figure in the newspapers, I
determined to take the earliest opportunity to get
rid of another of my six labours. The next torrent
of my eloquence was poured out from the summit-level
of a great canal, which, involving as it did a
great principle, excited a vast deal of interest in and
out of the house. Unfortunately for me, I did not
get a chance of speaking, until the subject had been
exhausted at least a score of times, in a score of
speeches. But for all this, I was resolved not to
lose my labours because others had forestalled them.
Accordingly, when every other orator had become
as exhausted as the summit-levels of some of our
canals, I rose in my might, and repeated, not only
all that had been said in the house, but all that had
been written out of it, for the last fifty years. I led
the house from the canal of the Red sea to the canal
of the Yellow river; from the canal of Languedoc
to the canal of Caledonia; from the canal of the
Duke of Bridgewater to that of Lake Erie: in
short I did what neither Sir Francis Drake, Ferdinand
Magellan, Christopher Columbus, nor Captain
Cook ever achieved; I sailed round the world on a
canal. Before I had finished one quarter of my
tour of inland navigation, more than three fourths
of the members were so fully convinced by my arguments,
that one after the other left the house,
having, as they afterwards assured me, made up
of the Rocky Mountains, never quitting my canal
for a moment; and there being no law against
repeating the same thing over again a hundred
thousand times, I might have spoken till doomsday,
had not Mr. Speaker at length waked up, and observed
that he believed there was no quorum, and
proposed an adjournment.
“Never was there a more complete triumph of
argument and eloquence combined,” said the Banner
of Truth; “the friends of the canal were one and
all so convinced, that they did not think it worth
while to stay further argument; and its foes fell
away before the thunder of his eloquence as the
walls of Jericho did at the blowing of the rams
horns.” I was at first a little mortified at the idea
of my speech not appearing with an end to it in the
report; but the reporter comforted me with the
assurance, that so long as a speech had a beginning,
it was of little consequence whether it came to any
conclusion or not.
I now began to be talked of as a rising politician;
for any man who can get on the back of a canal or
a railroad, is sure of immortality. I became the
Neptune of inland seas, a very “Triton of the minnows;”
and already began to aspire to an embassy
to some one of the new republics without any government.
“He has made the canal,” said a great man.
“You are mistaken,” said the member with the
tuneful voice and Cervantic tones, “you are mistaken
of my congressional register: I got rid of all my
speeches; besides offering thirty-six resolutions,
calling for information which the several heads of
departments assured me would require the united
labours of six hundred men, six hours in the day for
six years, to collect and arrange. In addition to
all this, I made about a hundred little extempores;
drafted a bill which was passed after all the sections
had been amended so as to mean exactly the contrary
of what I intended, and which afterwards
became the father of six volumes of commentaries;
and finally wound up triumphantly at the end of
the session, by striking out a “but,” and inserting
an “except,” in a bill for the relief of poor Amy
Dardin, after a long and animated debate, in which
great talents were displayed on both sides.
Towards the latter end of the last session of my
term, a great crisis happened. The whole confederation
was divided on a great question, which involved
a great fundamental principle, and it fell to
the lot of congress to decide by states, each state
having a vote. It was now indeed that I felt myself
a great man, since a great question, involving a great
principle, on which depended the salvation of unborn
millions, rested upon my single voice. I was the
sole representative of my state, and while others had
only the fractional part of a vote, I had a voice potential.
The other states were divided; my state
had the casting vote, and I, I alone, became a second
Hussey Bashaba been now at the seat of government,
she would not have wanted great men to hand her
in to supper. It behooved me to reflect seriously,
and to delay my decision to the last moment, although
at this distant period, I feel no hesitation in
confessing that I had made up my mind from the
first, with a proviso however that I saw no occasion
to alter it afterwards. As it was, I kept my opinions
as secret as the sources of the Niger. In so
doing, I acted by the special advice of my master,
his Excellency the Honourable Peleg Peshell, Esquire.
“I hold,” said he, in one of his letters, marked
`private and confidential,' “I hold it a sound maxim
in politics as well as morals, that where a man is determined,
upon principle, to pursue a certain line
of conduct, there is no obligation which ought
to restrain him from uniting his interests with his
principles, and making the most of the position in
which circumstances have placed him For this
purpose, it will be wise and patriotic in you to keep
your determination a profound secret, or even affect
to lean a little to the opposite side from that you
intend to unite with at last. When a vessel is at
anchor, nobody feels much solicitude about her;
but a drifting boat always brings a reward for
securing it. A word to the wise, &c.”
In pursuance of this advice, I affected to be undecided.
I had not made up my mind; I must consult
possible, and be governed by circumstances. Both
sides beset me with arguments; but when a man
has made up his mind, mere arguments weigh nothing.
I preserved my incognito, and talked as
mysteriously as an oracle.
One day a confidential friend of one of the great
principles—the reader must not confound principles
with principals—came to me, to discuss the subject.
“My dear Mr. Oakford, there can be no comparison
between the two principles. You must support
our principle.”
“My dear sir,” said I, “I have not the least
hesitation in saying I should support your principle”—Here
my friend took my hand warmly,
and cried with fervor, “my dear-r-r sir-r-r”—
“But”—Here he dropped my hand suddenly—
“But really, my dear friend, the question depends
so little on my single vote or my insignificant influence,
that though I mean, if I remain here, to
vote on your side, my family affairs are so pressing
at home, and my wife in such a bad state of
health, that I rather think I shall ask leave of
absence for the rest of the session.” A confidential
conversation followed which I cannot disclose, being
under the most solemn pledge to the contrary. The
result was, that I agreed to remain and support the
great principle, being satisfied by the arguments of
my friend, that the salvation of the Union and the
welfare of unborn millions depended on my single
achieved by my single arm, and I returned home to
await my reward.
In due time, I was invited to preside over a department
of the government, in consequence of
having so judiciously accommodated my principle
to my interest. It was now that I congratulated
myself on having sacrificed every thing to principle,
and that I expected to reap the reward of my patriotic
labours in the cause of unborn millions. I
proceeded to the seat of government, and took possession
of my honours. But alas! gentle reader,
from that time to the moment that I fell a sacrifice
to principle, I never knew a moment's ease. I was
a pillar of the state, and Samson with the gates of
Gaza on his back was but a type of me. It was not
long before I discovered that a statesman exercises
power as an ass does, by carrying burthens; and
that to be one of the highest of the rulers, is only to
become one of the lowest of slaves.
The labours and mortifications I underwent in
the course of my career of greatness, are beyond my
power to describe. In the morning when I came
down stairs, I found people waiting to speak with
me; I was stopped twenty times on the way to my
office, by people having important business; and
on my return to dinner, by other people, who
only wanted to say a few words, and kept me till
my dinner was cold, and my Bashaba out of all
patience. If I dined out, I found a dozen letters to
most important subjects; that is to say, on subjects
very important to others, and of not the least consequence
to myself. The whole mass of the good
people of my state applied in a body for offices.
One was a cousin of my wife; another had written
in my favour in the Banner of Truth; a third had
his eye put out at the polls, in advocating my cause;
a fourth was a grandson of a corporal of the revolution;
a fifth had once invited me to dinner; and
the remaining thirty-odd thousand brought the
warmest letters of recommendation from his Excellency
the Honourable Peleg Peshell, Esquire, who
was determined I should pay for his guardianship.
My whole official life furnished an exemplification of
the different light in which men view themselves, and
are viewed by others. I scarcely met with a man
who was not seeking an office for which he was
particularly disqualified, or which his situation ought
not to have placed him above soliciting, or accepting
when offered. A parson wanted a commission in
the army; a soldier, an appointment requiring special
knowledge of the civil law; a man who could
neither speak nor write his native language, a foreign
mission; an independent country gentleman begged
a situation unworthy a broken feather merchant,
thinking perhaps, with Epaminondas, that he would
confer honour on his office, though his office might
confer none on him; an honest gentleman from the
Emerald Isle, just naturalized, had great claims on
having fought at Vinegar Hill; another aspired to
a seat on the bench, having become exceedingly
well versed in criminal jurisprudence, by sustaining
several indictments with great gallantry, and coming
off with flying colours; and ten thousand at least
claimed the gratitude of the executive power, on the
ground of having been chairmen or secretaries of
ward meetings, and brawling at election polls.
There was one fine fellow whose claims were irresistible;
he had gained the election for an administration
constable, by managing to make one man
vote six times at the same poll. There was another
fine fellow that quite delighted me; he aspired to a
principal clerkship in one of the departments, and
his only disqualification was not being able to write.
“But then you know, sir, I can make my mark,
and the understrappers can do the writing for me.”
“Well, but,” said I, “what will you be doing all
the while others are performing your duties?”
“Oh, I can give advice to the secretary. I am a
capital hand at giving advice.”
Another still finer fellow, who had broke three
several times, never paid a debt in his life, and borrowed
money from every body that would lend,
demanded a situation in which millions of the public
money would pass through his hands; he brought
me recommendations from all his creditors, who saw
in his appointment to this office the only chance of
ever being paid. I ventured a delicate remonstrance.
private character is not necessary in a public character.”
I believe the only time I laughed, except at the
jokes of a greater man than myself, during the period
I remained an object of envy to millions, was
on an occasion I shall never forget. I was called
out of my bed, early one cold winter morning, by a
person coming on business of the utmost consequence,
and dressed myself in great haste, supposing
it might be a summons to a cabinet council. When
I came into my private office, I found a queer,
long-sided man, at least six feet high, with a little
apple head, a long queue, and a face, critically
round, as rosy as a ripe cherry. He handed me a
letter from his Excellency the Honourable Peleg,
recommending him particularly to my patronage.
I was a little inclined to be rude, but checked myself,
remembering that I was the servant of such men
as my visiter, and that I might get the reputation of
an aristocrat, if I made any distinction between
man and man.
“Well, my friend, what situation do you wish?”
“Why-y-y I'm not very particular; but some
how or other, I think I should like to be a minister.
I don't mean of the gospel, but one of them ministers
to foreign parts.”
“I'm very sorry, very sorry indeed; there is no
vacancy just now. Would not something else suit
you?”
“Why-y-y,” answered the apple-headed man, “I
wouldn't much care if I took a situation in one of
the departments. I wouldn't much mind being a
comptroller, or an auditor, or some such thing.”
“My dear sir, I'm sorry, very sorry, very sorry
indeed, but it happens unfortunately that all these
situations are at present filled. Would not you take
something else?”
“My friend stroked his chin, and seemed struggling
to bring down the soarings of his high ambition
to the present crisis. At last he answered,
“Why-y-y ye-s-s; I don't care if I get a good
collectorship, or inspectorship, or surveyorship, or
navy agency, or any thing of that sort.”
“Really, my good Mr. Phippenny,” said I, “I
regret exceedingly that not only all these places,
but every other place of consequence in the government,
is at present occupied. Pray think of something
else.”
He then, after some hesitation, asked for a clerkship,
and finally the place of messenger to one of
the public offices. Finding no vacancy here, he
seemed in vast perplexity, and looked all round the
room, fixing his eye at length on me, and measuring
my height from head to foot. At last, putting on
one of the drollest looks that ever adorned the face
of man, he said,
“Mister, you and I seem to be built pretty much
alike, haven't you some old clothes you can spare?”
“Oh, what a falling off was there!” from a
reader may be assured I gave him with infinite pleasure,
in reward for the only honest laugh I enjoyed
for years afterwards.
Among others whose names were sent on to me
for office, was young Brookfield, son of the worthy
man whose hospitalities I had repaid by assisting at
least to lay him in his grave, a victim to the great
principle on which the salvation of unborn millions
depended. I had now an opportunity to atone for
an injury, and repay benefits; but I received at the
same time a letter from his Excellency the Honourable
Peleg, recommending another person, and
warning me against young Brookfield, who belonged
to the party in opposition to the great Peleg,
as well as the great principle. “The great political
commandment,” said the great Peleg, “is to reward
your friends and punish your enemies. There
is nothing selfish in this principle, since you do not
reward your friends and punish your enemies because
they are your friends and enemies, but because they
are the friends and enemies of the great principle on
which the safety of the Union and the salvation of
unborn millions depend.” What were the claims
of gratitude or the atonement of injuries to these
sublime considerations? Poor Brookfield was passed
over, in favour of an adherent of the great Peleg
and the great principle. Brookfield turned his
attention to a better object, and in good time rose to
respectability and independence; so that after all, I
cannot say, however, that he ever evinced much
gratitude for my forbearance in his favour.
I speak as if I were acting in these cases without
control. But a man living in society cannot do as
he pleases at all times; a man in high station,
never. He is elbowed and restricted on all sides.
He has his equals, his superiors, his very dependents,
to influence and control his own wishes
and resolves; is sometimes the slave of his masters,
sometimes of his equals, and sometimes of
his slaves. There is but one greater slave than the
second man of a nation, and that is the first man of
a nation. I was no more master in my office than
in my own house, where Mrs. Bashaba managed the
home department entirely, and stood in the place of
the sovereign people.
My domestic affairs, and my domestic enjoyments
were, equally with my personal independence, sacrificed
to the intense labours and anxieties of my public
station. During the session of congress, I was
meted back some of my own measure, by certain
watchful and sagacious members, who moved resolution
after resolution, calling for information on certain
points, from the first organization of the government
to the present time. Some of these resolutions
took up the time of myself and my clerks, for
several weeks, and I took pride to myself for the
clear and able manner in which I drew up reports,
which were received, not read, laid on the table, and
had been gained. He had made a motion; got his
name in the newspapers; and acquired among his
constituents, the reputation of a vigilant guardian of
the public interests.
I had various other mortifications which none can
feel or know unless, placed in my situation. Sometimes
a member would perhaps revenge the disappointment
of some object, or the refusal of some favour,
by attacking my official conduct. At another
time the editor of a newspaper, to whom I had perhaps
neglected to send an advertisement, would
launch a random charge, or a thundering witticism,
at my head, and though as an individual, his good
or bad report was of no sort of consequence, still
his fiat editorial consecrated the inspirations of ignorance
and folly. In short, I sometimes had the
pleasure of suspecting that nearly one half my
countrymen believed me to be a blockhead or a
rogue. To say the truth, had it not been for my
perpetual recurrence to the first principles of the
great Peleg, I should sometimes have suspected that
I deserved the latter distinction, for I confess I often
broke my promises, and passed over merit and services,
in favour of political influence, which the Honourable
Peleg considered synonymous with political
principle.
My domestic was still less satisfactory than my
public life. The morning was a regular, “never ending,
still beginning” routine of vexatious toil. I
my power to comply with; to express regrets which
I did not feel; and hold out expectations which I
knew would never be realized. I made abundance
of enemies, and gained no friends; I was condemned
to meet ingratitude from those on whom I conferred,
and enmity from those to whom I refused benefits.
In short I was a slave to official duties, that brought
neither the rewards of a good conscience, nor remuneration
for the reproaches of a wounded one.
From my office, where I sat in my chair five or six
hours, without any exercise but that of a perplexed
and irritated mind, I dragged myself home, to dress
for a dinner at six o'clock, to put on silk stockings,
sit in a cold room three or four hours, eat enormously,
and get the rheumatism or dyspepsy. From
thence it was my hard fate to go to a party with Mrs.
Bashaba, who entered furiously into the dissipations
of the capital, now that the station of her husband
ensured her being handed in to supper by a foreign
minister, or in default, by an attaché at least. During
the daytime that good lady was perpetually driving
through the solitudes of the streets, paying visits to
ladies of distinction, at taverns, or trundling to
Georgetown, to ravage the milliners' shops. In one
season, she disabled three pair of horses, and two
coachmen; one of whom became a cripple with
rheumatism, the other fell into a decline, with a cold
caught in driving her to a party five miles off, in a
snow storm.
But this was not the worst. Mrs. Bashaba caught
the spirit of the place, and commenced the business
of flirtation, with an attaché, whose face resembled
that of a Newfoundland dog. He was the very personification
of whiskers, and was held to be very handsome,
for he marvellously resembled Peter the wild
boy. It was now that I thanked my stars, my wife
was not a beauty; for if she had been, I should have
become jealous, and she would have lost her reputation
to a certainty. As it was, I considered the devoirs
of Peter the wild boy, a homage paid to my
official dignity, rather than to the attractions of Mrs.
Bashaba; and as nobody envied the attaché, there
was no motive for taking away her reputation. The
happy result of these happy coincidences, was, that
I escaped the green eyed monster, and Mrs. Bashaba
scandal.
As I believe none of the writers on natural history
have described the race of whiskered animals,
called Attaché, it may be well to apprize my readers,
that they constitute the tail of the corps diplomatique.
They are the shadows of the minister, who is
the shadow of his august master, and are, of course,
the shadows of a shadow. They must be able to
cut up a dish at the ambassador's table; cut a
figure among the ladies; and cut a caper at balls.
It is their important duty to fill up cards of invitation;
answer notes not diplomatic; run about and
pick up news; get at every body's secrets and keep
their own; compliment the young ladies; talk scandal
of the minister to charitable societies; and put on their
embroidered coats on all proper occasions. Above
all they must understand etiquette, and sacrifice
the whole decalogue to a point of precedence. Four
or five years practice in these profound mysteries
qualifies them for Secretary of Legation.
The unlearned reader must be careful not to confound
etiquette with good breeding, such as is practised
among private persons. No two things can
be more different, nay, opposite to each other.
Among ordinary people, for example, when a stranger,
entitled to notice and hospitality, comes into
the place, it is considered well bred, to call on him
first, and invite him to your house. Etiquette however,
prescribes a different course. The stranger
must call on the resident, indirectly solicit his notice,
and thrust himself, or herself, on the hospitalities
of the person of distinction. Among well bred
people, if two persons happen to be going into a
dining room together, there will be a little contest of
courtesy, not who shall get in first, but who shall give
precedence to the other. Among people of etiquette
it is exactly the reverse. The point of honour consists
in maintaining certain imaginary rights of going
first, if it be only at a funeral; and a gentleman
or lady, who should lose their proper place, would
not be able to sleep for a week, without an anodyne.
When I was a member of congress, I came very
near occasioning a long and bloody war, between
the king of the country, in taking the hand of a lady
who happened to stand next me, to lead her into the
supper room. She had been assigned to the minister,
who immediately ordered his carriage, went
home without his supper, and penned a furious despatch
to his government, which he sent off express,
by an Attaché of three whiskers. The lady never
forgave my presumption. Had I been a senator, it
might have passed, but a member of the lower
House! it was too bad. Thus it will be perceived
that etiquette is the antipodes to good breeding. The
former consists in asserting, the latter in waiving, our
pretensions to precedence and superiority on all occasions.
It was curious to see the independent representatives
of a free people, paying homage to the superiority
of men they took every occasion to slight in
their public speeches, and complying with such docility
with the mandates of Monsieur Etiquette. The
first thing they did on arriving at the seat of government,
was to hire a hack, and drive furiously round
to all the givers of balls and dinners, to leave a card.
This entitled them to an invitation to all the balls
and dinners, provided they sent in their adhesion in
this manner, after every ball and dinner; otherwise
they only got an invitation to one ball and dinner,
for these things were too good to be had without
asking. For my part, while I was a member, I refused
this act of homage, which I then considered
the privileged few, I confess I did not find it altogether
so unreasonable. The consequence of my
refusal was, that I was cut by the whole corps diplomatique,
attachés and all; dined at home every day
by myself, and escaped dyspepsy for that session at
least.
At parties where I saw the same faces, and heard
the same speeches for a whole session, my great
amusement was to observe the various struggles of
all classes, to obtain that species of distinction which
is dependent not on ourselves, but other people. I could
always tell where the principal person, the lion of
rank, was stationed, by the tide which was tending
that way; and had I not known a single person in
the room, I could have pointed him or her out by
that infallible indication. Such struggles to get
near enough for a speech or smile, a nod, or a shake
of the hand! Such looks of triumph when the little
ones got side by side with the great; and such burstings
of self-importance when they had the honour of
walking arm in arm, with one on the next step of the
ladder above them! Every body seemed to live in
the sunshine of reflected honour, and none appeared
to found their claims to respect or consideration, on
the basis of conscious worth, or intrinsic merit. I
have seen the most insignificant beings on earth,
without character or talents, acquire a temporary
importance from the mere circumstance of having
by dint of a degrading perseverance acquired the
Nobody could eat their supper with an appetite
at the lower end of the table; and Mrs. Welcome
Bashaba always scolded the servants for a
fortnight, when she missed the glory of being handed
in and out by a qualified hand.
Such was the life I led year after year. By the
time summer came, I was completely run down, and
it took me all the rest of the year to wind myself up
again. If I went to the Springs, I was bored to
death by prosing politicians, giving their advice on
the conduct of public officers, or slily insinuating
claims to honour and office. If I visited a city where
there was no such nuisance as a seat of government,
for the purpose of relaxing a little in the midst of
its gaieties, there too I was beset by wise men and
wise women, talking nothing but eternal politics, and
reminding me that at such a time they had made application
for such an office, for sons, nephews, and
second cousins. If I returned to my poor little farm,
there it was ten times worse; every soul, far and near,
came to ask for something, for they all had assisted
in my elevation; and like poor Acteon, I was in danger
of being torn to pieces by my own hounds. I was
obliged to bow and smile, and play the courtier,
while my very soul was fretting itself to shreds and
tatters; for it is among the horrors of greatness, in
a free country at least, that it must be bought and
maintained at the awful, incalculable price of being
civil to all mankind. Yet still, such is the fascination
though it was gnawing at my vitals, and destroying
me by inches. I was indeed fast declining, and it is
my firm belief that a very few years would have
brought me to that great inn, where all mankind
take up their last night's lodging, had not my life
been saved by a lucky change in the great fundamental
political principle, on which the salvation of
unborn millions depended.
The people have in all times been stigmatized
with unsteadiness and ingratitude. But to do them
justice, I believe this versatility is only the consequence
of their perpetual disappointments. They
are promised great things from new rulers, which
promises are never realized, and by a natural consequence,
they change from admiration to indifference,
from indifference to contempt or disgust. But,
however this may be—tempora mutanter—times
change, men change, and principles change, if I am
to judge from my own experience. Even the great
Peleg, my mentor, underwent a metamorphosis.
For some time a silent revolution had been preparing
and maturing in the public mind, turning on
certain great mechanical principles, connected with
rail roads, canals, locks, breakwaters, and cotton
machinery. Political principles now seemed fast
verging into mechanical principles, and the machinery
of state to be almost entirely governed by
spinning jennies, weaver's beams, and topographical
surveys. The revolution of principle in my native
others turned on improving the navigation of rivers;
others on the auction system; others on coarse woollens;
and others on prohibiting the importation of
vermicelli; all fundamental political principles, on
which the existence of the union and the salvation of
unborn millions depended. But the most extraordinary
change of all, was that of a great state—an imperium
in imperio—whose fundamental principle turned
altogether on the question, whether freemasons took
their degrees on a red-hot gridiron or not. This
point divided the whole state, and threw the body
politic into convulsions. Committees were appointed;
inquisitors authorized to worry and harass whole
communities; and constitutional principles set at
nought in the discussion of the great fundamental
principle of the gridiron. But what most strikingly
proved the purity of the motives which governed
all these revolutionary bodies, in all their arguments,
contentions, and struggles, the word interest
was never once uttered. Nothing but conscience
and principle was appealed to, notwithstanding it
was the opinion of many honest people, that an appeal
to the conscience and principles of the opposite
party was like the lady Rosalind swearing by
her beard.
Somewhere about this period, the Honourable
Peleg, who watched the weathercock of politics as
a valetudinarian does the wind, all at once changed
his principles, having, as he wrote me, discovered
the existence of the union and the salvation
of unborn millions, was not what he took it to be.
He brought over the Banner of Truth to his side,
by sending the worthy editor a present of the largest
pumpkin that ever grew in the state; and the Banner
of Truth began forthwith to unsay all that it
had been saying for the last ten years. Never man
or woman either, unravelled an old stocking so dextrously,
and in as short a time, as the editor of the
Banner of Truth unravelled and turned inside out
all the arguments he had urged in support of the
old great fundamental principle. To be prepared
for the worst, however, he got a coat made, one half
homespun, the other half Regent's cloth, with a
jacket one side civil, the other military, which he
wore as occasion required.
For my part, though I saw the storm coming, I
determined to remain firm to my principles, knowing,
as I did full well, that it was now too late to
change to any good purpose, for my successor was
already designated. The denouement of the great
farce now approached; the whole country was convulsed—in
the newspapers. I went out, and another
came in; one great principle triumphed on
which depended the salvation of unborn millions;
and another great principle on which the salvation
of unborn millions, in the opinion of millions
of living persons, equally depended, went out of
fashion, at least for the time being. Will my readesr
I had lost my health, sacrificed my domestic habits,
and laboured like a galley-slave at the oar, only to be
rewarded with abuse and obloquy, from at least one
half of my countrymen; I left it with a regret, which I
can only account for upon the principle that man is
born unto trouble, and that it is in his nature to delight
to fish in troubled waters. As the City of the Desert
passed away from my backward view, I could
not help reflecting, that I had peradventure been
all my life fighting shadows, for shadows; and that
I was now returning to the starting place, with
nothing saved from the wreck of departed years,
but a fund of experience, which I was now almost
too old to turn to advantage. As the great copper
kettle turned upside down, which deforms one of
the finest structures of the age, disappeared behind
the forests of the city, I cast a rueful glance at Mrs.
Bashaba, who sat at my side, and there met the
comfortable assurance, that my retirement from the
turmoils of public life was not destined to be followed
by the calm of domestic repose.
One of the great delights of the seat of government,
is the necessity a great man labours under of
spending his salary in treating the gentlemen, who
are every day finding fault with his official conduct,
to sumptuous dinners. The simplicity of our republican
institutions requires that these dinners should
be as splendid as possible, and the wines of the most
rare and expensive kind. Without these indispensable
carry a measure, or do any thing for the benefit of
posterity. Every public functionary is expected to
come to the seat of government and go away, as we
come and go out of this world, without bringing
any thing with him or taking any thing away. I remember
once giving a vast dinner to twenty or thirty
members, one of whom was particularly devoted
to the wines and viands, and consumed nearly a
day's salary. The next day he made a famous
speech on republican simplicity, which he concluded
by moving to reduce the enormous salaries of the
great public functionaries, whose splendid dinners,
and silver forks, he described with most edifying
abhorrence. But notwithstanding the French wines,
the French cookery, and the silver forks, I had
saved a few solitary thousands, with which I intended
to improve my little box at home, and cultivate
a small farm I had purchased to please one of my
constituents, who had considerable political influence.
The first time I saw the Honourable Peleg after
my return, we had a hot argument on the question,
whether he or I had deserted the great principle.
It ended, as most political discussions do, in contention
and recrimination. We parted the worst
friends in the world. My farm was now my only
resource. At first the perfect ease, quiet, and self-command
I enjoyed was intolerable. I became melancholy
for want of something to trouble me, and
perished for lack of contradiction. But fate seemed
determined to persecute me with a life of perfect
ease. I lost Mrs. Bashaba a few months after my
retirement. The whiskered Attaché passed our door
without stopping, on his way to Boston, and she
never help up her head afterwards. Casting about
for something to do, it all at once occurred to me,
that I would call the Honourable Peleg to a reckoning
on the score of his guardianship. I had the
cruelty to put him in chancery; but I shared with
him the penalty of this unchristian act. I had now
enough to occupy my mind, and vex my very soul;
and I here record it as my firm opinion, that to be
in chancery is worse than to be the head of a department.
I several times saw the end of my suit,
but it was like a view of those high, snowy, perpendicular
summits we behold on approaching
the Andes, which the eye sees and the imagination
contemplates, but which are inaccessible to mortal
tread. When I began the suit, I was possessed of
three very good things; I had money, patience, and
a great veneration for equity. Before my suit was
ended, I had neither one nor the other. But time
does wonders; it can even bring a suit in chancery
to an end; and at length I got a decision in my
favour for a few thousands. But the Honourable
Peleg was prepared for me; he had assigned all his
property to a bank; the bank had hypotheticated it
to an insurance company; the insurance company
the spoil, and I might as well have looked for an
honest man among them as for my property. Yet,
strange to say, the Honourable Peleg, by sticking
close to the great political principle, still managed
to preserve the confidence of the people. He had
never held a public office where he was intrusted
with the public money, without being a defaulter;
he had never been charged with the care of another's
property without there being a deficiency in the
end; and he had never been president of a bank
that did not break and defraud the community.
Yet still his political principles were sound, though
his moral principles were rotten; and he was at
length selected by the legislature to prepare a code
of criminal jurisprudence for the state, upon the
ground, I presume, that you set a thief to catch a
thief, and that no man can be better qualified to
make laws, than he who has been long in the habit
of breaking them.
There is a certain homely unobtrusive philosophy
which makes very little figure in the works of Bolingbroke,
Boethius, or any other unfortunate
statesman. It may be called philosophy perforce,
and is worth all other systems put together. I mean
the capacity of the human mind to accommodate itself
to inevitable circumstances; to endure what
cannot be cured, and to make the best of a bad bargain.
This was now my consolation. I had gradually
lost all hope of again coming forward in political
shoes, another stands ready to step into them. If we
stop a moment in the great path, along which the
whole human race is pressing forward, we shall be
left behind, and can never again overtake the flood
that rolls on to success or ruin. By degrees, as this
conviction familiarized itself to my thoughts, I turned
from the past to the present, and gradually yielded
to the philosophy of necessity. I felt that my peace
of mind, my health, my subsistence, depended upon
exertion, and I began to exert myself. It was at first
loathsome and disagreeable for a man who had assisted
in swaying the destinies of an empire, to assist
a labourer in planting pumpkins. But I remembered
that Dioclesian planted cabbages; that Joseph
the second was a great maker of red sealing wax;
that Don Carlos of Naples employed his time in shooting
rabbits, and Don Ferdinand of Spain in embroidering
satin petticoats—above all, I remembered
the example of the great and perfect model of
Rulers, and his virtuous successors, who, one after
another retired from the cares of state, to cultivate
their farms; to give an example to the world, and
hear themselves every day blessed from afar off, by
the voices of millions.
I have now passed almost twenty years in my
humble retirement. The world has forgotten me,
and I am content to be forgotten. I can now look
calmly upon both worlds, that which I am leaving
behind, and that to which I am rapidly advancing.
that I might peradventure be remembered a
little after I am gone. But to do myself justice, I
had other and higher motives.
I have long seen, with fearful and melancholy anticipations,
the vast, and disproportioned space that
politics and party feelings occupy in the lives of my
fellow-citizens, to the exclusion of other, and let me
add, nobler pursuits. I have seen the country
thrown into a ferment; the charities of life, and the
bonds of benevolence, the obligations of truth, and
the ties of justice, all rent as burnt flax, and scattered
to the winds as nothing—an offering on the altar
of political strife. I have seen the most frivolous
objects, and the most contemptible offices, assuming
a vast and fallacious magnitude, and exciting the
most violent outrageous struggle for their attainment,
as if the parties were contending for the empire
of the world. In short, I have seen, as I think,
the finger of time pointing to that period, not far
distant I fear, when the choice of a chief magistrate
will be considered an object of greater moment, than
the precepts of morality, the obligations of religion,
or the preservation of our liberties. It cannot be
disguised that the spark which lights these political
conflagrations is struck out by the violent collision of
office-holders and office-seekers; and I am aware
that the experience of others weighs little with us in
balancing our own conduct and regulating our pursuits.
Still, perhaps a plain narrative of the unsatisfactory
may serve to mitigate at least the violence of
those contests, which end at length in a momentary
triumph, followed by a lasting defeat. Men may
learn from my example, how mistaken is the idea,
that the possession of power leads to independence,
or enables them to pursue their own will. If there
is any station in life in which we can do as we please,
it will be found much nearer the extreme of the beggar,
than that of the king.
All the honourable pursuits of life are salutary,
provided they are not sought with too great avidity,
and at the price of integrity and happiness. It is
moreover the bounden duty of every citizen to take a
strong interest in the conduct of public affairs, and the
prosperity of his country. But even patriotism as
well as religion has its limits, beyond which both become
fanaticism. He who sacrifices those principles
of honour, justice, charity, and truth, which are
essential to the happiness of mankind here as well
as hereafter, which never change, and in which all
agree, to a political principle, which is ever varying,
and about which all mankind differ, must in the end
become a most mischievous and pernicious citizen.
Lastly; I have preferred to make my drama a farce
rather than a tragedy. I pretend not to any other
authority than that of experience; but I have seen
enough of the world, and of the people of the world,
to know by experience, that beautiful as wisdom is,
if she would only sometimes condescend to smile,
she would be irresistible.
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