Our honourable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this great
attribute, that he always means something, and always means the same
thing. When he came down to that House and mournfully boasted in his
place, as an individual member of the assembled Commons of this great and
happy country, that he could lay his hand upon his heart, and solemnly
declare that no consideration on earth should induce him, at any time or
under any circumstances, to go as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed; and
when he nevertheless, next year, did go to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and even
beyond it, to Edinburgh; he had one single meaning, one and indivisible.
And God forbid (our honourable friend says) that he should waste another
argument upon the man who professes that he cannot understand it! ‘I do
NOT, gentlemen,’ said our honourable friend, with indignant emphasis and
amid great cheering, on one such public occasion. ‘I do NOT, gentlemen,
I am free to confess, envy the feelings of that man whose mind is so
constituted as that he can hold such language to me, and yet lay his head
upon his pillow, claiming to be a native of that land,
Whose march is o’er the mountain-wave,
Whose home is on the deep!
(Vehement cheering, and man expelled.)
When our honourable friend issued his preliminary address to the
constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one particular glorious
triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, that even he would be
placed in a situation of difficulty by the following comparatively
trifling conjunction of circumstances. The dozen noblemen and gentlemen
whom our honourable friend supported, had ‘come in,’ expressly to do a
certain thing. Now, four of the dozen said, at a certain place, that
they didn’t mean to do that thing, and had never meant to do it; another
four of the dozen said, at another certain place, that they did mean to
do that thing, and had always meant to do it; two of the remaining four
said, at two other certain places, that they meant to do half of that
thing (but differed about which half), and to do a variety of nameless
wonders instead of the other half; and one of the remaining two declared
that the thing itself was dead and buried, while the other as strenuously
protested that it was alive and kicking. It was admitted that the
parliamentary genius of our honourable friend would be quite able to
reconcile such small discrepancies as these; but, there remained the
additional difficulty that each of the twelve made entirely different
statements at different places, and that all the twelve called everything
visible and invisible, sacred and profane, to witness, that they were a
perfectly impregnable phalanx of unanimity. This, it was apprehended,
would be a stumbling-block to our honourable friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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