Part 13 (1/2)
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 unblus.h.i.+ng self-praise and laudation, and protect the country from the pus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.s to read in the s.p.a.ce of ten years, trusting that, ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the a.s.s, 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.”
Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than such a measure; nor could any man, short of Hume himself, object to so reasonable a proceeding as a patient and searching inquiry into the circ.u.mstances and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission goes to work: if a Tory one, consisting usually of some dumb country gentlemen, who like committee work;--if Whig, the suckling ”barristers of six years'
standing:” and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are ”sitting to examine witnesses”--a brief correspondence appears at intervals, to show that they have a secretary and a correspondent, a cloud then wraps the whole concern in its dark embrace, and not the most prying curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one feet concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.
It is, in feet, the polite mode of interment applied to the question at issue--the Commissioners performing the solemn duties of undertakers, and not even the most reckless resurrectionist being found to disturb the remains. Before the report should issue, the Commissioners die off, or the question has taken a new form; new interests have changed all its bearings; a new ministry is in power, or some more interesting matter has occupied the place it should fill in public attention; and if the Report was even a volume of ”Punch,” it might pa.s.s undetected.
Now and then, however, a Commission will issue for the real object of gleaning facts and conveying information; and then the duties are most uncomfortable, and but one course is open, which is, to protract the inquiry, like the man with the a.s.s, and leave the result to time.
In a country like ours, conflicting interests and opposing currents are ever changing the landmarks of party; and the commissioners feel that with years something will happen to make their labours of little consequence, and that they have only to prolong the period, and all is safe.
At this moment, we have what is called a ”Landlord and Tenant Commission” sitting, or sleeping, as it maybe. They have to investigate diverse, knotty, and puzzling points, about people who want too much for their land, and others who prefer paying nothing for it. They are to report, in some fas.h.i.+on, respecting the prospects of estated gentlemen burdened with rent-charges and mortgages, and who won't improve properties they can scarcely live on--and a peasantry, who must nominally pay an exaggerated rent, depending upon the chance of shooting the agent before the gale-day, and thus obtaining easier terms for the future.
They are to investigate the capabilities of waste lands, while cultivated lands lie waste beside them; they must find out why land-owners like money, and tenants hate paying it; and why a people hold life very cheap when they possess little means to sustain it.