OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND. [From " Household Words."]

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 693, 4 December 1852, Page 4

OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND. [From " Household Words."]

We are delighted lo find that he has got in! Our honourable friend is triumphantly returned lo ./oive in Ihe next Parliament. He is the honourable member for Vcibosity —lhe best represented place in England. Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the electors, which is worthy of (hat noble constituency and is a very pretty piece of composition. In electing him he says, (hey have covered themselves with glory, a.id 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 lo 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 slate, 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 Englishmen ; 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 Ihe (action is, or \ihieh 2re the hireling tools, and which the sacred bulwarks, what it is that is never lo be surrendered; and if not, why not ? But our houourable friend the member for Verbosity knows all about it. Our honourable friend has sal in several parliaments, and given bushels of votes. lie is a man of that profundity in the matter of votegiving 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 —thai 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 says 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 lie did mean then, or does mean now, our honourable friend will be glad lo receive an explicit declaration from you whether you are prepared lo destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. 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 lo that house and mournfully boasted in his place, as an individual member of the assemble 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 lime or under any circumstanced, to go as far north as JDerwick-upon-Tweed; and when he, nevertheless, next year, did go lo Berwick-upon-T>veed, and even beyond it lo Edinburgh, he had one single meaning, one and indivisible. And God forbid (our honourable friend says) thai he should waste another argument upon the man who professes that he cannot understand it "i do not, gentlemen/ said our honourable i'riend 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 whoso mind is so constituted as that he can hold such language lo me, and yel lay his head upon his pillow, claiming lo be a native of that land, '' ' Whose march is o'er the mountain-wave, Whose home is on the deep.' " (Vehement cheeiing and man expelled ) When our honourable friend issued his preliminary address lo 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 (rifling conjunction of circumstances: —The dozen noblemen and gentlemen whom our honourable friend supported had u come in" expressly lo do a certain tiling. Now, four of the dozen said,

al a certain place, that (hoy didn't mean to do (hat thin!?, and had never meant (o do it: another four of (lie dozen said, at another certain place, that they did lvmn to do (bat thing, and had always meant to do it ; two of the remaining four said, al 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 (hat 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. The difficulty came before our honourable friend in this way ; — He went down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent constituents, and to render an account (as he informed them in the local papers) of the trust they had confided to his hands — that trust to which it was one of the proudest privileges of an Englishman to possess, (hat trust which it was the proudest privilege of an Englishman to hold. It may ho ! mentioned, as a proof of the great general interest j attaching to the contest, that a lunatic, whom ! nobody employed or knew, went down to Veri bosily with several thousand pounds in gold, determined to give the whole away — which h& actually did ; and that all the publicans opened their houses for nothing. Likewise several fighting men, and a patriotic group of burglars, sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded (in barouches and very drunk) to the scene of action at (heir own expense ; these children of nature having conceived a warm attachment to our honourable friend, and intending in their artless manner, to testify it by knocking the voters in the opposite interest on the head. Our honourable friend being come into the presence of his consli(ucn(s, and having professed with great suavity that he was delighted to see his good f friend Tipkisson there, in his working dress — his good friend Tipkisson being an inveterate saddler, who always opposes him and for whom he has a mortal hatred — nr.de them a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in which he showed them how the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days from their coming in) exercised *a surprisingly beneficial effect on the whole financial condition of Europe, had altered the state of the exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that mailer rightabout the glut of the raw material and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce — and all this with wheat at so much a quarter, gold^aH so much an ounce, and the bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent? He nrght be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his principles ? His principles were what they always had been. His principles were written in the countenances of the lion and tne unicorn; were stamped indelibly upon the Royal shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free words of fire which that shield bore. His principles were, Britannia and her sea-king trident! His principles were, commercial prosperity co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment ; but short of this he would never slop. His principles were these,— with the addition* of h ; s colours nailed to the mast, every man's heart in the right place, every man's hand ready, every man's eye open, every man's mind on the alert. His principles were these, concurrently with a general revision of something — speaking genci rallv — and a possible re-adjustment of someIhingelscnot to be mentioned more particularly. His principles, to sum up all in a word, were Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and Sceptre, Elephant and Castle. And now, if his good friend Tipkisson required any further explanation from him, he (our honourable friend) was there, willing and ready to give it. Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd, with his arms folded and' his eyes intently fastened on our honourablefriend ; Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable friend's address had not relaxed a muscle or his Yisa'je, but had stood there, wholly un affected by the torrent of eloquence, an object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we mean, of course, to the supporters of our honourable friend), — Tipkisson now said that he was a plain man (cries of, "You arc, indeed! 1 ) and that what he wanted to know was, what our honourable friend and the dozen noblemen and gentlemen were driving at? Our honourable friend immediately replied, — "At the illimitable perspective." It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement of our honourable friend's political views ought immediately to have settled Tipkisson's business and covered him with confusion ; but that implacable person, regardless of the execrations that were heaped upon him from all fides (by which we mean of course, from our honourable friend's side) persisted in 1 retaining an unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted that if our honourable friend meant tha', he wished to know what that meant. It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition that our honourable friend' displayed his highest qualifications for the representation of Verbosity, His "warmest supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he should fallback upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. No such thing. He replied thus, — " My good friend, Tipkisson, gentlemen wishes to know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving at and when I candidly tell him al the illimitable perspective, he wishes (if I understand him) to know what I mean ? "I do," says Tipkisson amid cries of " Shame !" and " Down with him V* "Gentlemen," says our honourable friend, "I will indulge my good friend Tipki&son by telling him both what I mean and what I don't mean. (Cheers and cries of ( Give it him !') Be it known to him, then, and to all whom it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that I don't mean mosques and Mahomcdanism." The effect of this homelhrust was terrific. Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) jwas hooted down and hustled out, and has ever since been regarded as a Turkish renegade who contemplates an early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he Ihe only discomfited man. The charge while it sluck to him, was magically transferred to our honourable friend's opponent, who was represented in an immense variety of placards as a firm believer in Mahomet ; and< the men of Verbosity were asked to choose between our honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable friend's opponent and the Koran . They decided for our honourable friend and rallied round the illimitable perspective .