38 The Club-Room. [JAN. 



escaping him at intervals.) " Sixteen parishes up in arms. Governor in 

 Council, proclamation. 10,000/. Reward for Quashee, dead or alive. 

 Thirty-third regiment desperate business supposed to be all eaten. 

 The whole of the Leewards. Sugar canes blazing Bishop roasted 

 whole. American squadron, troops on board seen at the back of the 

 island. Martial law. Missionaries drilling. Solicit instant succour. 

 Whites all flying." (He puts the letter in his pocket.) Only a few lines 

 from a friend. Belmore, a little perplexed by the ordinary occurrences 

 of West India governorship. The novilas regni passes with him for the 

 res dura. I beg pardon for quoting Latin in this party. But the tran- 

 slation is, that when he is a few months more accustomed to a Jamaica 

 life, he will only wonder every morning he rises, that his ears are 

 upon his head, or his nose on his visage. The news, on the whole, is 

 excellent. 



Mummy. Come what will, we must not let the Americans get hold 

 of the Windwards and Leewards ; the price of candied ginger, potted 

 pines, turtle, and ten years' old rum, would be raised intolerably. 



Lancer. Patronage would fall fifty per cent.; and gentlemen's sons 

 would be forced to die of old age at home, instead of making a hand- 

 some exit of it, with the yellow fever, or a negro bullet. 



The Chairman. No ; neither Jonathan, nor King Quashee, nor Presi- 

 dent Boyer, nor the Czar Nicholas, must have a foot of sand in them. 

 And yet they give a confounded deal of trouble. There is something 

 in their rum-and-sugar-bloods that will not listen to reason. If they 

 are told that they must submit to orders from home, and so forth; 

 they answer, that the makers of those orders know no more of the 

 West Indies than they do of the kingdom of Prester John, and are 

 much fitter to sit for a Jew borough, or make a treasury bargain, than 

 to govern colonies three thousand miles off. If the government pro- 

 pose the emancipation of the negroes, they declare that the measure 

 would only make the planters beggars, and the negroes banditti. If 

 they are told that the slaves must at all events be set free, they demand 

 by what right their purchased property is to be meddled with, and" insist 

 on being paid its value. If it offer them the saints for their governors, 

 they have no hesitation in calling the saints sinners, except when they 

 make an exception in favour of those who are either dupes or enthu- 

 siasts, surcharged with folly or mad with fanaticism. If it soothe, they^ 

 call out " hypocrites." If it threaten, they point their insolent fingers 

 westward, and talk of America. Pray, Mummy, was it not once intended 

 to send you out to broil there ? 



Mummy. The scheme was knocked on the head, by the necessity for 

 keeping me at home. In the various public changes of the time, I 

 had gained the character of being the most useful stopgap alive ; com- 

 bined with all parties for the last thirty years, I was perfectly under- 

 stood to have no aversion to any. 



Flourish (who has been talking to Ringlet.) You write a comedy ! 

 Ha ! ha ! ha ! Though you might make a most capital figure in one, 

 rely upon it, you could never get beyond the first page. The opening 

 dialogue of the Footman and the Chambermaid would leave you as 

 exhausted as Hertford's hospitality ; and, after a pun or two, you would 

 expire. 



Ringlet. But Glengall has done something that has languished even 

 through three nights ; is talked of in the newpapers ; and, it is said, 



