Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the
Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a very
pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, they have covered
themselves with glory, and England has been true to herself. (In his
preliminary address he had remarked, in a poetical quotation of great
rarity, that nought could make us rue, if England to herself did prove
but true.)
Our honourable friend delivers a prediction, in the same document, that
the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up their heads any more;
and that the finger of scorn will point at them in their dejected state,
through countless ages of time. Further, that the hireling tools that
would destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality are unworthy of the
name of Englishman; and that so long as the sea shall roll around our
ocean-girded isle, so long his motto shall be, No surrender. Certain
dogged persons of low principles and no intellect, have disputed whether
anybody knows who the minions are, or what the faction is, or which are
the hireling tools and which the sacred bulwarks, or what it is that is
never to be surrendered, and if not, why not? But, our honourable friend
the member for Verbosity knows all about it.
Our honourable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given bushels
of votes. He is a man of that profundity in the matter of vote-giving,
that you never know what he means. When he seems to be voting pure
white, he may be in reality voting jet black. When he says Yes, it is
just as likely as not—or rather more so—that he means No. This is the
statesmanship of our honourable friend. It is in this, that he differs
from mere unparliamentary men. You may not know what he meant then, or
what he means now; but, our honourable friend knows, and did from the
first know, both what he meant then, and what he means now; and when he
said he didn’t mean it then, he did in fact say, that he means it now.
And if you mean to say that you did not then, and do not now, know what
he did mean then, or does mean now, our honourable friend will be glad to
receive an explicit declaration from you whether you are prepared to
destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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