University of Virginia Library

9. LETTER IX.
MR. DOWNING TELLS ABOUT TRIGGING THE WHEELS OF GOVERNMENT.

Dear Cousin Ephraim:—I've wrote you two postscripts since I
wrote you a letter, and the reason is, these Legislaters have
been carryin on so like all possest, and I've been in looking at
'em so much, I couldn't get time to write more than three
lines at once, for fear I should be out of the way, and should
miss seeing some of the fun. But, thinkin you'd be tired of
waiting, I tried to get the printer to send my letter yesterday;
but he told me right up and down he couldn't. I told
him he must, for I ought to sent before now. But he said he
couldn't and wouldn't, and that was the upshot of the matter,
for the paper was chock full, and more tu, of the Governor's
message. Bless my stars, says I, and have we got a Governor
done enough so he can speak a message? Yes, indeed we
have, says he, thanks be to the two great Republikin parties, who
have saved the State from the anarkee of the Jacksonites and
Huntonites; the Governor is done, and is jest a going into the
Legislater, and if you'll go right up there, you can see him.
So I pushed in among the crowd, and I got a pretty good
squeezin tu; but I got a good place, for I could elbow it as
well as any on 'em. And I hadn't been there five minutes,
seemingly, before we had a Governor sure enough; and a good
stout, genteel looking sort of a man he was tu, as you would
see in a whole regiment, taking in captains and all. Nobody

disputed that he was finished pretty workmanlike; and he
ought to be, for they'd been long enough about it. So they
concluded to swear him in, as they call it, and he took a great
oath to behave like a Governor a whole year. Some say the
wheels of Government will go along smooth and easy now,
as a wheelbarrow across a brick yard; but some shake their
heads, and say the wheels will be jolting over rocks and
stumps all winter yet; and I don't know but they will, for the
Governor hadn't hardly turned his back upon 'em and gone
out, before they went right to disputing agin as hard as ever.
They took up that everlasting dispute about Mr. Roberts having
a seat; for, if you'll believe me, they've kept that poor
man standing there till this time.

I'll tell you how 'tis, Cousin Ephraim, we must contrive
some way or other to keep these Jacksonites and Huntonites
out of the Legislater another year, or we shall be ruin'd; for
they make pesky bad work, trigging the wheels of Government.
They've trigged 'em so much that they say it has cost
the State about fifty thousand dollars a'ready, more than
'twould if they'd gone along straight without stopping. So
you may tell Uncle Joshua that besides that bushel of corn he
lost in betting about the Speaker, he'll have to shell out as
much as two bushels more to pay the cost of trigging the wheels.
Jingoe! sometimes when I've seen the wheels chocked with
a little trig not bigger then a cat's head, and the whole Legislater
trying with all their might two or three days, and
couldn't start it a hair, how I've longed to hitch on my little
speckled four-years-old, and give 'em a pull; if they wouldn't
make the wheels fly over the trigs in a jiffy, I won't guess
agin. T'other day, in the great convention, when both Legislaters

met together to chuse some Counsellors, Mr. Boutelle
and Mr. Smith, of Nobleborough, tried to explain how 'twas
that the wheels of Government were trig'd so much. Mr.
Boutelle, as I have told you afore, is a National Republikan,
and Mr. Smith is a Democratic Republikan. They differed a
little in their opinion. Mr. Boutelle seemed to think the trigs
were all put under by one class of politicians, and from what he
said, I took it he meant the Jacksonites. He said ever since
the Legislater began, the moment they started the wheels,
that class of politicians would throw under a chock and stop
'em; and which ever way they turned, that class of politicians
would meet 'em at every corner and bring 'em up all
standin. Mr. Smith seemed to think another class of politicians
had the greatest hand in it, and it was pretty clear that
he meant the Huntonites. He said, when they first got here
that class of politicians sot the wheels of Government rolling
the wrong way; they put the big wheels forward, and the
Legislater had been going backwards ever since, jest like a
lobster. And the Huntonites not only trig'd the wheels, whenever
they begun to roll the right way; but as soon as the
“blessed Governor” was done they trig'd him tu; and though
he had been done four days, they wouldn't let him come into
the Legislater so that their eyes could be blest with the sight
of him. So from what I can find out, the Jacksonites and
Huntonites both are a troublesome, contrary set, and there
must be some way contrived to keep 'em out of the Legislater
in future.

It seems soon after you got my first letter, Uncle Joshua
tackled up, and started off to Boston with a load of turkeys
and apple-sass. I had a letter from him t'other day, as long as

all out-doors, in the Boston Advertiser. He says he got more for
the turkeys than he expected tu; but I think it's a plaguey
pity he didn't bring 'em to Portland. I know he'd got more
than he could in Boston. Provision kind is getting up here
wonderfully, on account of these Legislaters being likely to
stay here all winter; and some think they'll be here half the
summer tu. And then there's sich a cloud of what they call
lobby members and office-hunters that the butchers have got
frightened, and gone to buying up all the beef and pork they
can get hold on, far and near, for they are afraid a famine
will be upon us next. Howsomever, Uncle Joshua did well to
carry his “puckery apple-sass” to Boston. He couldn't get a
cent for't here; for everybody's puckery and sour enough here
now.

Give my love to father and mother and cousin Nabby. I
shall answer their letters as soon as I can.