Page:Household Words - Volume 12.djvu/36

26 Commission, he conceived to be this:—Every wholesale dealer in that drug was sure to have on hand, in beginning business, a large stock of Noodledom; which was extremely cheap, and lamentably abundant. He immediately mixed the drug with the poison. Now, it was the peculiarity of the Public-Office trade that the wholesale dealers were constantly retiring from business, and having successors. A new dealer came into possession of the already adulterated stock, and he, in his turn, infused into it a fresh quantity of Noodledom from his own private store. Then, on his retirement, came another dealer who did the same; then, on his retirement, another dealer who did the same; and so on. Thus, many of the samples before the Commission, positively contained nothing but Noodledom—enough, in short, to paralyze the whole country. To the question, whether the useful properties of the drug before the Commission were not of necessity impaired by these malpractices, Mr. Bull replied, that all the samples were perniciously weakened, and that half of them were good for nothing. To the question, how he would remedy a state of things so much to be deplored, Mr. Bull replied, that he would take the drug out of the hands of mercenary dealers altogether.

Mr. Bull next exhibited three or four samples of Lawn-sleeves, warranted at the various establishments from which they had been procured, to be fine and spotless, but evidently soiled and composed of inferior materials ill made up. On one pair, he pointed out extensive stains of printer's-ink, of a very foul kind; also a coarse interweaving, which on examination clearly betrayed, without the aid of the microscope, the fibres of the thistle, Old Bailey Attorneyism. A third pair of these sleeves, though sold as white, were really nothing but the ordinary Mammon pattern, chalked over—a fact which Mr. Bull showed to be beyond dispute, by merely holding them up to the light. He represented this branch of industry as over-stocked, and in an unhealthy condition.

There were then placed upon the table, several samples of British Peasant, to which Mr. Bull expressed himself as particularly solicitous to draw the attention of the Commision, with one plain object: the good of his beloved country. He remarked that with that object before him, he would not inquire into the general condition, whether perfectly healthy or otherwise, of any of the samples now produced. He would not ask, whether this specimen or that men might have been stronger, larger, better fitted for wear and tear, and less liable to early decay, if the human creature were reared with a little more of such care, study, and attention, as were rightfully bestowed on the vegetable world around it. But, the samples before the Commission had been obtained from every county in England, and, though brought from opposite parts of the kingdom, were alike deficient in the ability to defend their country by handling a gun or a sword, or by uniting in any mode of action, as a disciplined body. It was said in a breath, that the English were not a military people, and that they made (equally on the testimony of their friends and enemies), the best soldiers in the world. He hoped that in a time of war and common danger he might take the liberty of putting those opposite assertions into the crucible of Common Sense, consuming the Humbug, and producing the Truth—at any rate he would, whether or no. Now, he begged to inform the Commission that, in the samples before them and thousands of others, he had carefully analysed and tested the British Peasant, and had found him to hold in combination just the same qualities that he always had possessed. Analysing and testing, however, as a part of the inquiry, certain other matters not fairly to be separated from it, he (Mr. Bull) had found the said Peasant to have been some time ago disarmed by lords and gentlemen who were jealous of their game, and by administrations—hirers of spies and suborners of false witnesses—who were jealous of their power. "So, if you wish to restore to these samples," said Mr. Bull, "the serviceable quality that I find to be wanting in them, and the absence of which so much surprises you, be a little more patriotic and a little less timorously selfish; trust your Peasant a little more; instruct him a little better, in a freeman's knowledge—not in a good child's merely; and you will soon have your Saxon Bowmen with percussion rifles, and may save the charges of your Foreign Legion."

Having withdrawn the samples to which his observations referred—the production whereof, in connection with Mr. Bull's remarks, had powerfully impressed the assembled Commission, some of whom even went so far as to register vows on the spot that they would look into this matter some day—Mr. Bull laid before the Commission a great variety of extremely fine specimens of genuine British Job. He expressed his opinion that these thriving Plants upon the public property, were absolutely immortal: so surprisingly did they flourish, and so perseveringly were they cultivated. Job was the only article he had found in England, in a perfectly unadulterated state. He congratulated the Commission on there being at least one commodity enjoyed by Great Britain, with which nobody successfully meddled, and of which the Public always had an ample supply, unattended by the smallest prospect of failure in the perennial crop.

On the subsidence of the sensation of pleasure with which this gratifying announcement was received, Mr. Bull informed the Commission, that he now approached the most serious and the most discouraging part of his task. He would not shrink from a faith-