Part 38 (1/2)
”How can you know their minds, sir?”
”By their leading columns.”
”Those are no clue.”
”What! Do they think one thing and print another? Why should the independent press do that? Nonsense.”
”Why, sir? Because they are bribed to print it, but they are not bribed to think it.”
”Bribed? The English press bribed?”
”Oh, not directly, like the English freeman. Oblige me with a journal or two, no matter which; they are all tarred with the same stick in time of bubble. Here, sir, are 50 pounds worth of bubble advertis.e.m.e.nts, yielding a profit of say 25 pounds on this single issue. In this one are nearer 100 pounds worth of such advertis.e.m.e.nts.
Now is it in nature that a newspaper, which is a trade speculation, should say the word that would blight its own harvest? This is the oblique road by which the English press is bribed. These leaders are mere echoes of to-day's advertis.e.m.e.nt sheet, and bidders for to-morrow's.”
”The world gets worse every day, Skinner.”
”It gets no better,” replied Richard, philosophically.
”But, Richard, here is our county member, and ----, staid, sober men both, and both have pledged their honor on the floor of the House of Commons to the sound character of some of these companies.”
”They have, sir; but they will never redeem the said honor, for they are known to be bribed, and not obliquely, by those very companies.”
(The price current of M. P. honor, in time of bubble, ought to be added to the works of arithmetic.) ”Those two Brutuses get 500 pounds apiece per annum for touting those companies down at Stephen's. ---- goes cheaper and more oblique. He touts, in the same place, for a gas company, and his house in the square flares from cellar to garret, gratis.”
”Good gracious! and he talked of the light of conscience in his very last speech. But this cannot apply to all. There is the archbishop; he can't have sold his name to that company.”
”Who knows? He is over head and ears in debt.”
”But the duke, _he_ can't have.”
”Why not? He is over head and ears in debt. Princes deep in debt by misconduct, and bishops deep in ditto by ditto, are half-honest, needy men; and half-honest, needy men are all to be bought and sold like hogs in Smithfield, especially in time of bubble.”
”What is the world come to!”
”What it was a hundred years ago.”
”I have got one pill left for him, Skinner. Here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man whose name stands for caution, has p.r.o.nounced a panegyric on our situation. Here are his words quoted in this leader; now listen: 'We may safely venture to contemplate with instructive admiration the harmony of its proportions and the solidity of its basis.' What do you say to that?”
”I say it is one man's opinion versus the experience of a century.
Besides, that is a quotation, and may be a fraudulent one.”
”No, no. The speech was only delivered last Wednesday: we will refer to it. Mum! mum! Ah, here it is. 'The Chancellor of the Exchequer rose and--' mum! mum! ah--'I am of--o-pinion that--if, upon a fair review of our situation, there shall appear to be nothing hollow in its foundation, artificial in its superstructure, or flimsy in its general results, we may safely venture to contemplate with instructive admiration the harmony of its proportions and the solidity of its basis.'”
”Ha! ha! ha! I quite agree with cautious Bobby. If it is not hollow, it may be solid; if it is not a gigantic paper balloon, it may be a very fine globe, and vice versa, which vice versa he in his heart suspects to be the truth. You see, sir, the mangled quotation was a swindle, like the flimsy superstructures it was intended to prop. The genuine paragraph is a fair sample of Robinson, and of the art of withholding opinion by means of expression. But as quoted, by a fraudulent suppression of one half, the unbalanced half is palmed off as a whole, and an indecision perverted into a decision.
I might just as fairly cite him as describing our situation to be 'hollow in its basis, artificial in its superstructure, flimsy in its general result.' Since you value names, I will cite you one man that has commented on the situation; not, like Mr. Robinson, by misty sentences, each neutralizing the other, but by consistent acts: a man, gentlemen, whose operations have always been numerous and courageous in less _prosperous_ times, yet now he is _out of everything_ but a single insurance company.”
”Who is the gentleman?”
”It is not a gentleman; it is a blackguard,” said the exact youth.
”You excite my curiosity. Who is the capitalist, then, that stands aloof?”