LITMIR.BIZ

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Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be

       That, with a haughty and unwavering faith

       In their own battering-rams of argument,

       They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk

       To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle

       Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe,

       They are amazed at our rude disrespect

       In making mockery of an English Law

       Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's brain!

       —I hear them snort; but let them wince at will,

       My duty must be done; shall be done quickly

       By citing some few facts.

       An Act for our defence!

       It weakens, not defends; and oversea

       Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons

       This moment know it, and can scoff thereat.

       Our people know it too—those who can peer

       Behind the scenes of this poor painted show

       Called soldiering!—The Act has failed, must fail,

       As my right honourable friend well proved

       When speaking t'other night, whose silencing

       By his right honourable vis a vis Was of the genuine Governmental sort, And like the catamarans their sapience shaped All fizzle and no harm. [Laughter.] The Act, in brief, Effects this much: that the whole force of England Is strengthened by—eleven thousand men! So sorted that the British infantry Are now eight hundred less than heretofore! In Ireland, where the glamouring influence Of the right honourable gentleman Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns, Where he is held in absolute veneration, His method has so quickened martial fire As to bring in—one man. O would that man Might meet my sight! [Laughter.] A Hercules, no doubt, A god-like emanation from this Act, Who with his single arm will overthrow All Buonaparte's legions ere their keels Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore!... Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind. [He sits down amid cheers. The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt rises. During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch crying the hour.]

      PITT

       Not one on this side but appreciates

       Those mental gems and airy pleasantries

       Flashed by the honourable gentleman,

       Who shines in them by birthright. Each device

       Of drollery he has laboured to outshape,

       [Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,]

       Displays that are the conjurings of the moment,

       [Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on]—

       Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace,

       Stored without stint of toil through days and months—

       He heaps into one mass, and light and fans

       As fuel for his flaming eloquence,

       Mouthed and maintained without a thought or care

       If germane to the theme, or not at all.

       Now vain indeed it were should I assay

       To match him in such sort. For, sir, alas,

       To use imagination as the ground

       Of chronicle, take myth and merry tale

       As texts for prophecy, is not my gift

       Being but a person primed with simple fact,

       Unprinked by jewelled art.—But to the thing.

       The preparations of the enemy,

       Doggedly bent to desolate our land,

       Advance with a sustained activity.

       They are seen, they are known, by you and by us all.

       But they evince no clear-eyed tentative

       In furtherance of the threat, whose coming off,

       Ay, years may yet postpone; whereby the Act

       Will far outstrip him, and the thousands called

       Duly to join the ranks by its provisions,

       In process sure, if slow, will ratch the lines

       Of English regiments—seasoned, cool, resolved—

       To glorious length and firm prepotency.

       And why, then, should we dream of its repeal

       Ere profiting by its advantages?

       Must the House listen to such wilding words

       As this proposal, at the very hour

       When the Act's gearing finds its ordered grooves

       And circles into full utility?

       The motion of the honourable gentleman

       Reminds me aptly of a publican

       Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing's past,

       Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting,

       Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head,

       And cry in acid voice: The ale is new!

       Brew old, you varlets; cast this slop away! [Cheers.]

       But gravely, sir, I would conclude to-night,

       And, as a serious man on serious things,

       I now speak here.... I pledge myself to this:

       Unprecedented and magnificent

       As were our strivings in the previous war,

       Our efforts in the present shall transcend them,

       As men will learn. Such efforts are not sized

       By this light measuring-rule my critic here

       Whips from his pocket like a clerk-o'-works!...

       Tasking and toilsome war's details must be,

       And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,—

       Not in a moment's stroke extemporized.

       The strange fatality that haunts the times

       Wherein our lot is cast, has no example.

       Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom;

       We have to mark their lourings, and to face them.

       Sir, reading thus the full significance

       Of these big days, large though my lackings be,

       Can any hold of those who know my past

       That I, of all men, slight our safeguarding?

       No: by all honour no!—Were I convinced

       That such could be the mind of members here,

       My sorrowing thereat would doubly shade

       The shade on England now! So I do trust

       All in the House will take my tendered word,

       And credit my deliverance here to-night,

       That in this vital point of watch and ward

       Against the threatenings from yonder coast

       We stand prepared; and under Providence

       Shall fend whatever hid or open stroke

       A foe may deal.

       [He sits down amid loud ministerial cheers, with symptoms of

       great exhaustion.]

      WINDHAM

      

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