Page:Household Words - Volume 12.djvu/11



THE GREAT BABY. HAS it occurred to any of our readers that that is surely an unsatisfactory state of society which presents, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-five, the spectacle of a committee of the People's representatives, pompously and publicly inquiring how the People shall be trusted with the liberty of refreshing them- selves iu humble taverus and tea-gardens on their day of rest ? Does it appear to any one whom we now address, and who will pause here to reflect for a moment on the question we put, that there is anything at all humiliating and incongruous in the existence of such a body, and pursuit of such an en- quiry, in this country, at this time of day 1 For ourselves, we will answer the question without hesitation. We feel indignantly ashamed of the thing as a national scandal. It would be merely contemptible, if it were not raised into importance by its slanderous aspersions of a hard-worked, heavily-taxed, but good-humoured and most patient people, who have long deserved far better treatment. In this green midsummer, here is whether any other light, and domestically ruled in any other manner, than as a gang of drunk- ards and disorderlies on a Police charge-sheet ! O my Lords and Gentlemen, my Lords and Gentlemen, have we got so very near Utopia after our long travelling together over the dark and murderous road of English history, that we have nothing else left to say and do to the people but this ? Is there nothing abroad, nothing at home, nothing seen by us, nothing hidden from us, which points to higher and a committee virtually enquiring the English can be regarded in more generous things ? There are two public bodies remarkable People could or would endure the inconveni- ences and deprivations, sought to be imposed upon them by the latest Sunday restrictions. We who write this, have again and again by word of mouth forewarned many scores both of Members and Monomaniacs, as we have heard others forewarn them, that what 'they were in the densest ignorance allowing to be done, could not be borne. Members and Mono- maniacs knew better, or cared nothing about it ; and we all know the rest to this time. Now, the Monomaniacs, being by their disease impelled to clamber upon platforms, and there squint horribly under the strong possession of an unbalanced idea, will of course be out of reason and go wrong. But, why the Members should yield to the Mono- maniacs is another question. And why do they 1 Is it because the People is altogether an abstraction to them ; a Great Baby, to be coaxed and chucked under the chin at elec- tions, and frowned upon at quarter sessions, and stood in the corner on Sundays, and taken out to stare at the Queen's coach on holidays, and kept in school under the rod, generally speaking, from Monday morning to Saturday night ? Is it because they have no other idea of the People than a big-headed Baby, now to be flattered and now to be scolded, now to be sung to and now to be denounced to old Boguey, now to be kissed and now to be whipped, but always to be kept in long clothes, and never under any circumstances to feel its legs and go about of itself? We take the liberty of replying, Yea. And do the Members and Monomaniacs suppose that this is our discovery ? Do they live in the shady belief that the object of their capricious dandling and punishing does not resentfully perceive that it is made a Great Baby of, and may not begin to kick thereat for knowing nothing of the people, and j with legs that may do mischief 1 for perpetually interfering to put them right. In the first month of the existence of this The one is the House of Commons ; the other. Journal, we called attention to a detachment fclie Monomaniacs. Between the Members | of the Monomaniacs, who, under the name and fclieMonomaniacs,thedevoted People, quite ! of jail-chaplains, had taken possession of the unheard, get harried and worried to the last extremity. Everybody of ordinary sense, prisons, and were clearly offering premiums to vice, promoting hypocrisy, and making models possessing common sympathies with neces- j of dangerous scoundrels.* They had their sities not their own, and common means of way, and the Members backed them; and now observation Members and Monomaniacs are of course excepted has perceived for months past, that it was manifestly impossible that the | their Pets recruit the very worst class of TOL. XII. 280
 * Volume the First, page 97.