J830.J The Club Room. 427 



off their cartridges in each other's faces, or driving their bayonets 

 into each other's rear. I protested against both motions, and every 

 motion that they have made from the beginning. I took one of them 

 by the button, and asked him whether, in the name of common sense, 

 he believed that any man in the nation, cared three straws about the 

 sitter on the throne of Portugal? or believed that Don Miguel was a hair 

 blacker or whiter than Don Pedro? or cared whether Don Miguel married 

 his niece, or his grandmother ? or whether the whole dynasty were food 

 for the crabs of the Tagus, and the Emperor of Morocco was seated 

 drinking port wine in the palace of Lisbon ? on he would go, and was 

 met by a rebuff in the teeth, and in the shape of his own share of the 

 orders for some prominent blunder. What I could do, I did. I remon- 

 strated with him, before the debate, and I abandoned him when up 

 to the neck in it. His fate is decided, and he has to thank himself 

 for the consequences. 



Fickle. Then the Greeks ? 



Megrim. May every pang of absurdity, may every bitter conscious- 

 ness that the ridicule of all mankind can inflict on the human heart, be 

 his lot who first broached that question. It has been our ruin. It has 

 perplexed us in private ; it has scandalized us in public ; it has driven 

 from us all the honest part of the nation ; and it has made us the com- 

 mon centre, the point of rendezvous, to every knave, from the wall of 

 China to the Pacific. Is it to be supposed that we were asses enough 

 to escape this knowledge, or that we had ears for nothing better than for 

 flaps to our eyes ? We saw the whole evil that dabbling in the cause 

 must bring. Yet, in one corner, we had a romancer of seventy, who 

 got mad with the memory of the Trojan war ; another, who took to the 

 blue skies and green mountains, and dreamed himself into every hole in 

 Parnassus ; a third, who had wit, wisdom, or knowledge enough for a 

 seller of beer, settled with himself that he was born for a maker of 

 codes ; a fourth, into whom all the birch in Windsor forest could never 

 have whipped the declension of a noun substantive, determined to figure 

 as a restorer of learning, and bustled about setting up a college; a 

 fifth, a tenth, a five hundredth, determined that he must be fit for some- 

 thing there, because he was fit for nothing here : and the whole rushed 

 forward with a clamour for Greece, as rational as if it had been the ac- 

 claim of so many travelling donkeys. What was to be done ? If I led, 

 I made myself a fool ; if I followed, I made myself a slave ; if I stood 

 still, I was left alone. 



Fickle. Of the break down in the Greek affair there can be no 

 doubt ; and as little, that every tumble of this kind is so much strength 

 given to the enemy. But if we are to join, what are the terms ? (They 

 whisper.) 



Rakely. (Observing them, to Blunderbuss, aside.) What can those two 

 fellows be about? They can't be picking each other's pockets, for 

 neither of them ever keeps a loose shilling about him ; at least, as long 

 as he can make five per cent, of it ; nor conspiring to pick the nation's 

 pockets ; for they know that they are far enough from that, and, be- 

 sides, that the affair is in other hands. 



Blunderbuss. Nonsense ! They are trying to pick each other's brains ; 

 and they will find the task as hopeless, for the same reason. They 

 might as well expect a regular account of Navarino from Codrington, or 



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