Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/138

130 author asked, "Sir! do you mean to say that you approve of the crime?"

"Oh, no!" was his answer. "Certainly not, but, consider how it will make the papers sell! I have shares in one or two."

The writer was talking the other day to a timber merchant on the condition of Ireland. "I trust," said he, "that the Plan of Campaign will not be suppressed as yet. We can buy Irish oak at fourpence a foot just now."

The writer was discussing the annexation of Alsace with a native farmer. "Well," said he, "when we belonged to France I sold for a franc what I now sell for a mark, therefore, God save Kaiser Wilhelm." "But," was objected, "probably you now have to pay a mark for what formerly cost you a franc." He considered for a moment, and then said, "That is true, vive la France!" Twopence turned his patriotism this way to Berlin, or that way to Paris. He was a German when selling, a Frenchman when buying, all for twopence.

The professional politician is a man who lives by politics as the professional chess-player lives by chess. He acquires a professional conscience. His profession has to fill his pockets and find bread for his children, and politics must be kept going to do so. The chess-player sacrifices pawns to gain his end. The stoker shovels on coals into the furnace to make his engine gallop; and the electrician pours vitriol into the battery to produce a current in his wires. They have none of them the slightest scruple in doing these things—they belong to the business, and the professional politician has no scruple in playing with facts, and throwing them away as pawns in his game, or of exciting the passions and prejudices of men, or of using the most biting and corroding acid in his endeavours to evoke a current of feeling. When an organist desires to produce a noise, he pulls out stop diapason, and dances on the pedals. The