TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ORATORS, HAVE MERCY!
IN human affairs, simplicity is a result of advanced art, and so is the apportionment of the means to the end; waste of power being one characteristic of a rude state. In the infancy of cookery, as CHARLES LAMB'S friend MANNING used to relate, a house was burned to roast a pig : the British House of Commons has a debate to record one idea. The arguments for and against the said idea might commonly he compressed into a very small space ; but con- densation is an art unknown to Members of Parliament, and a whole week will be taken before they can be delivered of their heap of crude notions. In great part, it is not argument that is thus furnished, but the raw material for argument. This is one way of eking out a show of abundant resources, also characteristic of a barbarous condition. It is the aim of English refinement and luxury to press the utmost wealth, convenience, and power, into the least possible space : an English travelling-carriage, with a valet in the dicky, is a repertory of costly elegance and indulgence ; an Eastern voluptuary is surrounded by an army of menials, has a herd of sumpter-beasts to bear the aids and appliances of his ease ; and yet he is not so luxuriously served as the occupant of the quiet carriage. Writers before the time of SHAKSPERE, of DANTE, or HORACE, had learned to put a truth into a single line : in the British Senate, six hundred gentlemen will talk for seven or eight hours on seven or eight nights running, utter volumes of circumlo- cution, and omit the truth after all. But then they will display their "information "—their materials for thinking. It is not wonderful that where the reasoner himself neglects thoroughly to digest his materials, to condense them, bring them to a point, and extract the inevitable conclusion, a heterogeneous assembly fails to do so. Hence, in part, the frequent resultlessness of interminable palavers. Lord ASHLEY'S exposure of the evils of popular igno- rance occurs to the memory as a case in point, precisely because it was perhaps the most important, benevolent, and laudable proceed- ing of the last session : Lord ASHLEY poured upon the House an immense quantity of startling facts ; but they were not sifted—not digested; and he expressly avoided coming to a definite conclusion. He succeeded in drawing attention to the subject, however; and Government brought in a bill, of which the undigested state was more positively blameable. The bill served as a topic of party "discussion," and failed.
But oftener these endless palavers come to nothing at all— not even to an unserviceable toy. For years the Corn-law was " discussed " before it was " settled " ; and years more will have been spent before the House have been able to posit the truth about the Corn-laws. There are two reasons for this weakness : not only is the Legislature habituated to a method of ratiocination that baulks and paralyzes its will, but the very prolixity of speakers defeats attention and prevents conviction. " Debating" is almost the reverse of the process by which a logical conclusion and con- viction can be attained. An analysis of the commonest kind of debate will unfold a curious process of stultification. A Member begins by laying down a proposition which should be a conclusion : he then makes a " statement "—a stupendous mass of " facts" genuine or false, selected, seldom because their soundness has been tested, but chiefly for their apparent strength. Whereas you may keep a man's attention alive, say for half an hour, and convince him at the end of it by a plain argument, the Honourable Member has spoken for two, three, four, or more hours ; and to "keep alive" attention, has introduced a multitude of heterogeneous topics—as many as possible—party allusions, allusions to past de- bates, to the coming debate, to every thing. The House which he was to convince has become very noisy ; and as he proceeds the din waxes-
" Diverse lingue, [the polyglot dialect of Parliamentary " Animali par- /anti,") orribili favelle, [shocking fibs,) Foci alte a fioche, [with bawling and dining,] e anon di man con elle, Facevano an tumulto il qual s' aggira
Come la rens quando '1 turbo spire."
Having attained that favourable stage for clinching his argument, he suddenly winds up by what is called a " peroration "—an in- flated tissue of commonplaces after the fashion of a schoolboy's " theme " on one of the cardinal virtues, or some of the " didactic pieces" in Enfield's Speaker. Now there is a still stranger pro- ceeding: after the Honourable Member has fatigued the House for hours, another Honourable Member, not quite so leading a man, nor quite so capable of making a "statement," just says the first speech all over again, only not quite so well : he always begins by saying that, after the able and brilliant statement of his honour- able friend, it would be presumptuous and superfluous in him to retrace the same ground, and to repeat arguments already so much better put ; but nevertheless he does it. The House has now been brought, half of it into the very dreary condition of listening to stale truisms, and the other into a state of newly-excited hostile obstinacy. At this point a third Honourable Member rises, and affirms the very opposite proposition to that already laid down ; and then the same process of confusion and reduplication takes place with that counter-statement. That done, up rises a fifth Honourable; who, with a little variation—barely enough, if it were in a book, to evade the copyright-law—rehearses the speech of the mover and seconder ; and a sixth repeats the address of the amend- ment-mover and seconder. But that is not the only means of re- duplication : many of these speakers not only say the very same thing that has been said twice or thrice before, but they have a
knack of saying it themselves twice over, like the his in a French song ; as if for the pure delight of hearing it over again once more. Suppose the subject is repeal of the Corn-laws : the mover says- " The bounty of Providence is defeated by these accursed laws. The fertile globe teems with fruitfulness; our stores of mineral wealth enrich us with manufactures; commerce is eager—is ready to clothe the naked inhabitant of New Russia, and to feed the hungry working. classes of our own favoured land; but legislation steps in and forbids the bans." (Loud cheers.)
The seconder-
" It has been well observed by my honourable friend, and I need not repeat what he has put with that force and that ability for which he is so eminently distinguished, that these accursed laws defeat the bounty of Providence ; for they prevent the intelligent artisan of this powerful kingdom from clothing the naked Pole, and they prevent that Pole from filling the hungry stomach, if I may be allowed the expression, of those working classes who would clothe that Pole." (Cheers.)
The mover and seconder of the amendment having both asked how we are to be sure that the hungry Pole could pay for our ma- nufactures, and whether he would not desire gold for his corn, (on a supply of which it is hopeless to depend, though it is so cheap and abundant that it would swamp the English market,) the third supporter of the original motion says-
" I tell the honourable gentleman opposite, to take care how he supports a sacrilegious policy that frustrates the beneficence of Providence. But for these accursed laws, the corn which the unclad native of the verdant plains that border the Black Sea extends to our labour-soiled and famishing artisan, might be exchanged for that golden harvest which rots upon the boundless ter- ritory of the great Northern despot in impious waste. (Cheers.) I warn the honourable Member, that there is a defiance, a sacrilegious defiance of Heaven in what he does. It is his policy which interposes unhallowed ob- stacles to that sublime effect of commerce, which would convey from the floors of our warehouses a portion of the manufactured goods with which they groan, and bring us in return the smiling wealth of Ceres from the once bar- barous Scythian wilds." (Loud cheers.) Ten to one that the burden recurs again and again during the night, and often in duplicate—bis. But by the time a few Members have thus overlaid and confounded the subject, up rises one who starts off to some other matter—the Bank-Restriction Act, "Re- becca," the want of a British Consul at Palenque or PortoVenere- disputed narratives of some police-affray in Ireland—all sorts of af- fairs, having nothing to do with the matter in hand—often as unfit for discussion in such a place as a theological principle, impossible to be settled on points of fact, and aiding nothing but the Babel con- fusion of tongues and topics. Nor do Members confine themselves to their own sense or nonsense, abundant as it may be ; but they ransack every quarter for shreds and patches of other men's say- ings—old speeches out of old debates—some passages as familiar to the reader as Mr. O'CoNNELL's "hereditary bondsmen" ; recent speeches at public meetings, which may or may not apply; "articles" from newspapers ; letters from country cousins. Each one of these irrelevant topics occasions a fresh dispute as to the accuracy of the quotation, the real opinion of the original speaker—of Mr. Hos- NissoN, say, who has been quoted and counter-quoted on the Corn- laws, till very few know what he really did think ; the credibility of the original speaker; and if all that be admitted, then some other authentic quotation is made as a counterpoise—as ADAM SMITH is balanced by Riceano. By this means, a ten-minutes speech may be padded out to fill an hour and a half. Ten o'clock arrives, with its white waistcoats and "old Bacchus," and an impulse is given to the prolixity ; twelve o'clock, and Mr. BROTHERTON dawns : the bell rings ; the Speaker " puts " the question ; Members tumble into the House, and hustle into the Lobby ; and next morning the nation learns that the Representatives of the People are of opinion, "That "—and so forth.
The idea of the Grand Council of the Nation is, that the People's Representatives meet to advise each other on policy and law- making. But of what earthly use is it, to give precisely the same advice, in lengthened phrase, that has already wearied the ear ? The notion of Members seems to be, that the calling of Parliament is meant principally to give them an opportunity of delivering treatises on given subjects—ill-concocted, half-impromptu essays. The idea of influencing the vote, of coming to any conclusion on the advice, is all but abandoned ; and speakers address, not their hearers, but "the public." And the joke of it is, that the public don't read a tithe of the speeches. Did it never strike any Honour- able, that brevity engages attention and fixes the memory ; that if a speaker never rose but when he had something to say—something new, at least for that debate—all would be ready to listen to him ; that if they knew he would sit down again in ten minutes, they would make the best use of their listening faculties, instead of disposing themselves for a doze ; and that if his rising were thus hailed as a prelude to something worth hearing, the mere fact would prefix a value to what was coming, and must give the concise speaker a peculiar influence ? Let it be supposed that this laconic orator rose even at the trying hour of seven : it would be said—" Mr. Speak- to-the-point has risen ! Oh, he will not keep us ten minutes ; and when he gets up there is sure to be something worth hearing : let us stay." Would he influence the vote—if such a thing be possible— or the man who sickened the House with a two-hours farrago of stale crudities, or even a two-hours stream of pretty good elo- quence " ? A stirring play, well acted, makes one pretty tired; but a two-hours soliloquy !-
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