V.—Party Tactics—and Political Obstructions to Social
Reform.
IN the Club our hero revelled awhile under
the protection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the
petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and
loungers who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen
of Stock Exchange mannerism and
dressiness gave the protégé the go-by, and
even sneered at those who noticed him with
kindness. But then these are of the men with
whom every question is checked by money,
and is balanced on the pivot of profit and
loss. I dare say some of them thought the
worse of Judas only because he had made so
small a gain out of his celebrated transaction.
To foster Ginx's Baby in the Club, as a recognition
of the important questions surrounding
him, though these questions involved hundreds
of thousands of other cases, was to them
ridiculous. Of far greater consequence was
it in their eyes to settle a dispute between
two extravagant fools at Constantinople
and Cairo, and quicken the sluggishness of
Turkish consols or Egyptian 9 per cents. I
do not cast stones at them; every man must
look at a thing with his own eyes.
But it was curious to note how the Baby's
fortunes shifted in the Club. There were times
—when he was a pet chucked under chin by the
elder stagers, favored with a smile from a
Cabinet Minister, and now and then blessed
with a nod from Mr. Joshua Hale. Then,
again, every one seemed to forget him, and he
was for months left unnoticed to the chance
kindness of the menials until some case
similar to his own happening to evoke discussion
in the press, there would be a general
inquiry for him. The porter, Mr. Smirke,
had succeeded, by means of a detective, in
discovering the boy's name, but his parents
were then half-way to Canada.
The members of the Fogey Club opposite,
hearing that so interesting a foundling was
being cherished by their opponents, politely
asked leave to examine him, and he occasionally
visited them. They treated him kindly
and discussed his condition with earnestness.
The leaders of the party debated whether he
might not with advantage be taken out of
their opponents' hands. Some thought that
a judicious use of him might win popularity;
but others objected that it would be perilous
for them to mix themselves up with so doleful
an interest. In the result the Fogies tipped
young Ginx, but did not commit themselves
for or against him. Thus a long time elapsed,
and our hero had grown old enough to be a
page. He had received food, clothing, and
goodwill, but no one had thought of giving
him an education. Sometimes he became
obstreperous. He played tricks with the
Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to
improper uses; he laid traps for upsetting
aged and infirm legislators; he tried the
coolness of the youngest and best-natured
Members of Parliament by popping up in
strange places and exhibiting unseemly
attitudes. At length, by unanimous consent,
he was decreed to be a nuisance, and a few
days would have revoked his license at the
Club.
No sooner did the Fogies get wind of
this than they manœuvred to get Ginx's
Baby under their own management. They
instructed their "organs,'' as they called them,
to pipe to popular feeling on the disgraceful
apathy of the Radicals in regard to the
foundling. They had him waylaid and treated
to confectionery by their emissaries; and once
or twice succeeded in abducting him and
sending him down to the country with their
party's candidates, for exhibition at elections.
The Radicals resented this conduct
extremely. Ginx's Baby was brought back to
the Club and restored to favor. The Government
papers were instructed to detail how
much he was petted and talked about by the
party; to declare how needless was the
popular excitement on his behalf; and to
prove that he must, without any special
legislation, be benefited by the extraordinary
organic changes then being made in the
constitution of the country.
Sir Charles Sterling resumed his interest in
the boy. He had been gallantly aiding his
party in other questions. There was the
Timbuctoo question. A miserable desert
chief had shut up a wandering Englishman,
not possessed of wit enough to keep his
head out of danger. There was a general
impression that English honor was at stake,
and the previous Fogey Government had
ordered an expedition to cross the desert and
punish the sheikh. You would never believe
what it cost if you had not seen the bill. Ten
millions sterling was as good as buried in
the desert, when one-tenth of it would have
saved a hundred thousand people from starvation
at home, and one-hundredth part of
it would have taken the fetters off the hapless
prisoner's feet.
There was the St. Helena question always
brooding over Parliament. St. Helena was
a constituent part of the British Empire.
Every patriot agreed that the Empire without
it would be incomplete; and was so far
right that its subtraction would have left the
Empire by so much less. Most of its inhabitants
were aboriginal—a mercurial race,
full of fire, quick-witted, and gifted with the
exuberant eloquence of savages, but deficient
in dignity and self-control. Before any one
else had been given them by Providence to
fight, they slaughtered and ravaged one another.
Our intrusive British ancestors stepped
upon the island, and, being strong men,
mowed down the islanders like wheat, and
appropriated the lands their swords had
cleared. Still the aborigines held out in
corners, and defied the conquerors. The
latter ground them down, confiscated the
property of their half-dozen chiefs, and
distributed it among themselves. By way of
showing their imperial imperiousness, they
built over some ruins left by their devastations
a great church, in which they ordered
all the islanders to worship. This was at
first abomination to the islanders, who fought
like devils whenever they could, and ended by
accepting the religion of their foes. But the
conquerors, afterwards choosing to change
their own faith, resolved that the islanders
should do so too. Forthwith they confiscated
the big church and burying-ground,
and, distributing part of the land and
spoils among their most prominent scamps,
erected a new edifice of quite a different
character, in which the natives swore they
could neither see nor hear, and their own
clerics warned them they would certainly be
damned. To make the complications more
intricate, these clerics owed allegiance to an
ancient woman in a distant country, who had
all the meddlesomeness and petty jealousy of
her sex, and was, besides, much attached to
some clever wooers of hers, wily sinners who
covered their aims under the semblance of
ultra-extreme passion for her. The prominent
scamps died, to be succeeded by their children,
or other of the hated conquerors, from
generation to generation. The islanders went
on increasing and protesting. They starved
upon the lands, and shot the landlords when
a few gave them the chance, for most lived
away in their own country, and left the property
to be administered by agents. The
Home Government had again and again been
obliged to assist these people with soldiers,
to provide an armed police, to shoot down
mobs, to catch a ringleader here or there and
send him to Fernando Po, or to deprive whole
villages of ordinary civil rights. Then the
yam crop failed, and nearly half the people
left the island and crossed the seas, where
they continued to hate and to plot against
those whose misfortune it had been to get a
legacy of the island from their fathers. It
would be wearisome to recount the absurdities
on both sides: the stupidity or criminal absence
of tact from time to time shown by the
Home Government—the resolve never to be
quiet exhibited by the natives, under the
prompting of their clerics. Upon
"—that common stage of novelty—''
there were ever springing up fresh difficulties.
Secret clubs were formed for murder and
reprisal. A body called the "Yellows'' had
bound themselves by private oaths to keep
up the memory of the religious victories of
their predecessors, and to worry the clerical
party in every possible way. Their pleasure
was to go about insanely blowing rams'-horns, carrying flags and bearing oranges in
their hands. The islanders hated oranges,
and at every opportunity cracked the skulls
of the orange-bearers with brutal weapons
peculiar to the island. These, in return,
cracked native skulls. The whole island was
in a state of perpetual commotion. Still,
its general condition improved, its farms
grew prosperous, and a joint-stock company
had built a mill for converting cocoanut
fibre into horse-cloths, which yielded
large profits. The memory of past events
might well have been buried; but the clerics,
in the interest of the old woman, fanned the
embers, and the infamous bidding for popularity
of parties at home served to keep alive
passions that would naturally have died out.
Besides, latterly folly had been too organized
on both sides to suffer oblivion. Everybody
was tired of the squabbles of St.
Helena. At length there was a general
movement in the interests of peace, and to
pacify the islanders Parliament was asked to
pull down the wings of the old church edifice,
remove some of the graves, and cut off a large
piece of the graveyard. Some were in favor
also of dividing all the farms in the country
among the aborigines, but the difficulty was
to know how at the same time to satisfy the
present occupiers. These schemes were topics
of high debate, upon them the fortunes of
Government rose and fell, and while they
were agitated Ginx's Baby could have no
chance of a parliamentary hearing.
Many other matters of singular indifference
had eaten up the legislative time; but at last
the increasing number of wretched infants
throughout the country began to alarm the
people, and Sir Charles Sterling thought the
time had come to move on behalf of Ginx's
Baby and his fellows.
