The petty subterfuges of party would not stand such a test as this; all
the little miserable explanations--that it was a quarrel in the kitchen,
that the cook said this and the footman said that, would go for nothing.
You were turned out, and why?--that's the bone and sinew of the matter.
To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party that he was going
to do every thing for every body--to plunder the parsons and pay the
priests--to swamp the constitution and upset the church--respectable
people would take time to look at his papers; they would see that he was
an active little busy man, accustomed to do the whole work of a family
single-handed; that he was in many respects attentive and industrious,
but had a following of low Irish acquaintances whom he let into the
house on every occasion, and that then nothing escaped them--they
smashed the furniture, broke the looking-glasses, and kicked up a
regular row: for this he was discharged, receiving all wages due.
And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics from the member
for Tiverton, how easily would the matter be comprehended in one
line--“a good servant, lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient, and
apt to take airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet next
door, and causing a difference between the families.”
Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might
be measured in reading--“hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the
carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and spoiled
the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own duties, but
spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in fact a
most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both smart and
intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on company days.”
Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long
neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than all
the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a world of
unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country from the
pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.
A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.
Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his
head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he
would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that,
ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that
the wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all
parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes
a debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and
accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of
it, and appoint “a Commission.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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