Quodlibet Part 11

Winkelman, actuated by patriotic emotions, also issued a batch payable in soda-water, soap, or physic. Zachary Younghusband, the tinplate-worker and postmaster, reflecting on the crisis, and being determined to contribute his mite toward the regulation of the currency, followed the example of Dr. Winkelman, and put out a ream, redeemable in Copperplate Bank notes when presented to the amount of five dollars at his tinplate shop. Sim Travers, who had a drinking shed at the lower end of the ca.n.a.l basin, with equal public spirit, uttered his paper in fips, "Good for a Drink." Many others imitated these precedents, whereby it fell out that no part of the Union was better supplied with a currency than Quodlibet.

Still the Borough languished and pined under a gradual decay of its prosperity; and it was long before our wise men could ascertain the real source of this decline. The cause was at last discovered. We are indebted for its development to the astuteness of our distinguished representative. There were eight of the princ.i.p.al mercantile houses of the Borough which had been established by Whigs: in fact, throwing out Barndollar & Hardbottle, all the merchants of Quodlibet might be said to be opposed to the administration. It was very apparent, after the Hon.

Middleton Flam drew the attention of the club to this fact, that these houses had combined to produce an utter prostration of business, solely for political effect, and that the malevolence of four of the most thriving among them had gone so far as even to render themselves bankrupt, and to break up, for no earthly purpose but that of making the administration unpopular. "This is a specimen of the grat.i.tude," said Mr. Flam, speaking with great emotion upon the subject, "this is the grat.i.tude of these commercial vultures--(he always called them commercial vultures after the Suspension, and when speaking to the people)--for all the manifold favors and bounties which, for five years past, the government has been so a.s.siduously heaping upon their heads.

This is their acknowledgment of the extraordinary kindness shown them by the Secretary of the Treasury when he directed our bank to lend these vipers the public money! Biddle and the Barings are at the bottom of this conspiracy; and the merchants of the United States, yes, and the manufacturers and all the moneyed men, would gladly beggar themselves and their families rather than allow us to regulate their currency and make them the happiest people on earth. What unparalleled perfidy!"

After this, the New Lights of course became indignant against the merchants, and held them up, as they deserved, to public execration, as the authors of all our misfortunes. From Quodlibet, this sentiment became general among the New-Light Democrats everywhere. Mr. Van Buren caught the idea; the Globe expatiated upon it; the Stump rang with it; and it soon took its place as one of the cardinal maxims in the New-Light creed. Such is the supremacy of one commanding intellect!

Never was there a topic equal to this in the elections. "The merchants," Theodore Fog very pertinently remarked, "are a first-rate subject for a stump speech: they are a monstrous _little_ knot of fellows, anyhow--and, comparatively speaking, of no sort of account, in the way of voting. Having the handling of a good deal of cash, and plenty to do in the way of giving and taking of promissory notes, you can slap upon them the argument of The Money Power with tremendous effect: you can tickle them with the whip of Aristocracy in perfection; and you can run 'em down with the text of the money-changers in the Temple, and all that sort of thing, to a nicety. Besides, there are so few of them that either _can_ make a speech before the people, or, if they can, will take the trouble to follow a man about for that purpose, that you are not likely to be pestered with their replies. Capital animals for _an opposition_, they take a lathering so quiet! Then, sir, for every _one_ merchant you lay upon his back, you gain _five_ True Grits to your side. I've studied that out. Our people, I mean the New Lights, can be made to hate a merchant like snakes--because if he does get on well with his business, and makes a little fortune, we can call him a Rag Baron, a Ruffle Shirt, a Scrub Aristocrat,--and that's equal to sending him to the deserts of Arabia: and if he fails, as the greater part of the poor devils do, we can get up a still worse cry against him for turning the humble and honest laborer out of employment, grinding the faces of the poor, depriving the widow and the orphan of their bread, and coining the sweat of the Bone and Sinew's brow to feed Usurers, Brokers, and Shavers. And, by-the-by, these arguments are quite good against manufacturers and Whig master-mechanics. But a merchant, sir, can't hold up his head one moment before them. Every which way, sir, he's a prime scape-goat. Then, sir, when we want to make an EXPERIMENT,--why, of course, we go to the merchants. Here's all this _currency_ business, especially the tail of it, the Sub-Treasury--fine thing to stir up the people with--sounds well in theory, though a little mischievous in practice. Well, sir, we test it on the merchants: _we_ get the popularity, _they_ get the damage. The approved philosophical mode to try a dangerous experiment, is to attempt it on a cat:--sir, _The Merchants are our cats_."

Mr. Flam, seeing the state of our divisions, took a great deal of trouble to restore harmony into our ranks, and certainly did much to overawe the True Grits, who, now fancying themselves in the ascendent, became very dictatorial. Eliphalet Fox, although he took every occasion to speak in his paper greatly in commendation of Mr. Flam, was, nevertheless, an active upholder of the True-Grit division. "Our worthy representative," he said, "was happily stationed above the influence of these little _family quarrels_; and it was undoubtedly a subject of congratulation with that distinguished gentleman, that every section of the great Democratic household of Quodlibet could cordially unite the testimonials of their confidence in his talents, his patriotism, and his fidelity to the interests of his const.i.tuents."

This paragraph was considered a master-stroke of New-Light Democracy in Eliphalet, because its tendency was to keep him and his paper on good terms with all parties supporting the administration, while it left him free to pursue the paramount objects which the True Grits steadily kept in view.

These objects were the attainment of all the lucrative offices in our district,--a striking exemplification of which now occurred in the celebrated Tigertail affair. That affair my duty as a chronicler requires me to notice.

A secret meeting of the True Grits had been lately held in the Borough.

The subject in discussion was a weighty one. It was reported to this conclave that Ferox Tigertail, the marshal of this district, who resided and kept his office in Bickerbray, had in his employment two individuals of suspicious principles. The first was Washington Cutbush, a clerk, who had been overheard to say, at the Sycamore Spring, in a confidential conversation with his brother-in-law, Lemuel Garret, that he began to think Tom Benton's gold currency a HUMBUG! The second was Corney Dust, the porter and firemaker of the office, who, there was reason to believe, had voted at the last election for Agamemnon Flag. Upon these facts being vouched to the meeting by Magnus Morehead, the True Grit shoemaker in the Borough, and Sandy b.u.t.tercrop, the express-rider, message-carrier, baggage-porter, and follower of sundry other visible means of livelihood, it was resolved that a committee of three, to consist of Eliphalet Fox, Dr. Winkelman, and Nim Porter, should wait upon Mr. Tigertail, communicate to him the full extent of the charge, and require him, in the name of The Exclusive, New-Light, True-Grit Democrats of Quodlibet, forthwith to dismiss Washington Cutbush from his office, and subst.i.tute Magnus Morehead in his place; and also to supersede Corney Dust by the appointment of Sandy b.u.t.tercrop.

The committee, in pursuance of these instructions, visited the marshal, and explained the object of their mission in respectful but firm language. Tigertail, being a choleric man, and an old Federalist to boot,--who had been converted to the New-Light faith about eight years ago, at the date of the renewal of his commission,--heard the committee with exemplary composure; and then setting his eyes, with a fixed glare, upon Eliphalet Fox, he waited about ten seconds--at the end of which brief period of deliberation, he kicked the said Eliphalet clean out of his office:--and this being done to his entire satisfaction, he rather testily invited Dr. Winkelman and Nim Porter to follow their chairman.

It is due to these two gentlemen to say, that like good committee men, they did so,--even antic.i.p.ating the marshal's invitation to the adoption of that course of conduct.

This incident being faithfully reported by the committee to the meeting of True Grits, convened for the express purpose of learning the result, it was unanimously resolved,--First, that Tigertail's demeanor was mysterious, equivocal, and unexpected; secondly, that it was unpolite to Eliphalet Fox; and, thirdly, that it was against the principles and usages known to the New-Light Democracy. Another resolution was adopted to lay the whole matter before the President of the United States, and to instruct him, as the Representative of the People, to dismiss Marshal Tigertail, without delay, from his post; and confer it upon the injured Eliphalet Fox, whose kicking ent.i.tled him to the deepest sympathy of the party, and gave him, according to a well-established maxim of the New Lights, a right to immediate preferment.

These resolutions imparted great satisfaction to the meeting, and no doubt was entertained that the President would act upon the subject with that prompt.i.tude which distinguishes his character. Marshal Tigertail was looked upon as a doomed man, and no better than a Whig; and indeed he was already considered as having joined that party. Dr. Thomas G.

Winkelman, Nim Porter, and Dabbs, the compositor, were intrusted with this emba.s.sy of instruction to the President;--Eliphalet Fox being left out of the deputation from obvious considerations of delicacy--a sentiment which it must be allowed has ever characterized the proceedings of the True Grits on all occasions, and which many of the most observant and sagacious of that sect have a.s.serted has been the princ.i.p.al cause of the failure of their schemes.

The new deputation lost no time in setting forth upon the execution of their duty. They were attended to the stage coach by a large number of True Grits, who, to use the language of Theodore Fog, "signalized their departure with indignant pomp." Great expectations were indulged on this appeal, or rather this mandate to the President. Day after day pa.s.sed by without bringing news from the mission:--the Globe was taken from each mail with increased avidity, in the hope of seeing some official announcement of the removal of Tigertail. A provoking silence on that point reigned throughout its columns. Ten days rolled on without a letter from the committee:--a fortnight wore away, and yet none had returned. A traveler at last reported that he had seen Nim Porter at the White Sulphur Springs. It was ascertained that Dr. Winkelman was in the City of New York purchasing drugs for his shop; and upon investigation it was discovered that Dabbs had been at his work in the printing-office, unknown to the Borough, for more than a week. By a singular coincidence of feeling among the True Grits, all curiosity as to the fate of the mission suddenly subsided. The subject was treated with indifference; and in the course of a few days, after both Dr.

Winkelman and Nim Porter had returned home, when the Thorough Blue Whole Team put forth a paragraph inquiring after the Tigertail Emba.s.sy, the Whole Hog came out with a petulant and snappish reply, affirming that the report of such a mission was a mere Whig lie, coined with a view to political effect, and uttered in the Whole Team simply because "that mendacious and filthy sheet delighted to revel in falsehood, and had never been known to stumble upon the truth, even by accident." Dr.

Winkelman studiously avoided all reference to his absence from the Borough, and Nim Porter was equally cautious for about a month; at the expiration of which period Neal Hopper happened to say, in his presence, he had good reason to know that Marshal Tigertail was no favorite with the President, and would be removed from office before the end of the next Congress;--whereupon Nim, very unguardedly and under a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, planted himself before the miller and said,--

"I'll bet you one hundred dollars to ten upon that."

"Well, I 'spose you know?" said Neal, struck by Nim's peremptory manner.

"Conclusively and distinctly," replied Nim with some heat. "If you think Liphalet Fox is going to be the marshal you're mistaken: I know Martin Van Buren," he added with some display of self-importance, "considerably--and I can tell you that he goes the whole figure against rotation in this individual and identical case. He's a Mandarin from snout to tail--trained up from the gum, and wouldn't touch a True Grit with a forty-foot pole. Martin has defined his position emphatically.

There can't be a possibility of mistake upon the subject."

"Do you mean to say that you heard him say so?" inquired William Goodlack, the tailor, a strenuous member of the True Grits, looking angrily at Nim.

"That's neither here nor there," replied Nim. "But I'll stand to the bet of one hundred dollars to ten, that Tigertail's not turned out of office this year: you are welcome to take it yourself, Billy Goodlack, if you're a mind for a bet."

"Whoever said Tigertail ought to be turned out?" asked Goodlack, peevishly, "'cepting Neal Hopper, who picked up such a story out of the nine thousand lies of the Whole Team?"

From this little brush with Nim Porter, and from the looks that pa.s.sed between the parties engaged in it, there was room for the inference that the President didn't give much encouragement to the committee who went to him with instructions to turn out the marshal: and this is nearly everything that has ever transpired in Quodlibet upon that subject. It is very certain that, for some time after this date, the True Grits were not so bold as a party as they had been before. Eliphalet Fox was undoubtedly much chop-fallen during all the following winter.

CHAPTER XIII.

A POLITICAL DISCUSSION AT ABEL BRAWN'S SHOP--ABEL'S VIEWS OF THE SUB-TREASURY--IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION MADE BY THEODORE FOG--THE NEW LIGHTS TAKE GROUND AGAINST THE BANKS--THE HON.

MIDDLETON FLAM RESIGNS THE PRESIDENCY OF THE COPPERPLATE BANK--SNUFFERS ASPIRES TO THE SUCCESSION.

Toward the latter end of August, in the year referred to in the last chapter, about five o'clock in the afternoon, a much larger collection than usual of work horses were seen around Abel Brawn's shop, waiting to be shod. The shop stands a few rods below Christy M'Curdy's mill, and immediately upon the bank of the Rumblebottom. The mill is just outside of the compactly-built portion of the Borough; and from the door, Neal Hopper, the miller, could see along the road, on his left hand, into the princ.i.p.al cross street of Quodlibet, and on his right, directly into Abel Brawn's smith-shop. This advantage of position was much prized by Neal, because it enabled him to observe everybody going either from the town-side or the country-side to the blacksmith's. And as the shop was a famous ground for political discussion and newsmongering; and as Neal had an insaturable stomach (insaturabile abdomen) for that sort of gossip, a glance from the mill door gave him the means of knowing who was either at or on the way to the shop. Then, if the company suited him, he was in the habit of confiding the temporary government of the mill to a mealy-headed negro called Cicero, who could turn out a grist as well as himself, and so allow himself the chance of a brush at argument with Abel Brawn's customers.

On this evening in August, as I said, there were more horses than usual at the smithy. Six or seven men were lounging about the door or in the shop, talking very loud, with every now and then a word from Abel, who was busily employed alternately hammering out shoes on the anvil, and fitting them to the horses' feet; while squinting Billy Spike, a rather ungainly lad, an apprentice to the smith, was keeping off the flies with a horsetail fastened to the end of a stick. I had been taking a walk that evening with some of my boys to look at the ruins of the old school-house, and, seeing this little gathering about Abel Brawn's, I stopped to hear what was going on. Being somewhat fatigued by my exercitation, I sat down on the bench under the shed, having sent my boys home by themselves, and remained here a quiet though not an inattentive spectator of the scene before me. It is by cultivating such opportunities that I have been enabled to impart that interest to these pages which, without vanity, I may say my reader cannot fail to discover in them. Such have ever been my choicest and most profitable moments of observation--subseciva quaedam tempora, quae ego perire non patiar.

Neal Hopper was engaged in repairing a bolting-cloth up stairs in the mill, and, for some time after this a.s.semblage had gathered about the smith's shop, did not hear or seem to know what was going forward, until there came a loud, sharp laugh and a whoop which aroused his attention.

As soon as he heard this, he p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, listened a moment, and upon a repet.i.tion of the laugh, stepped to the window, looked down toward the shop and saw who were there, then called Cicero to finish the repair of the bolting-cloth--and went straight to the blacksmith's.

"Well, what's the fraction," said Neal, "that you're all a busting out in such a spell of a laugh about?"

Hearing Neal's voice, Abel Brawn put down the horse's foot which he was then shoeing, from his lap, and standing upright, replied,--

"There seems to be a sort of a snarl here among these brother Democrats of yours, concerning of this here Sub-Treasury. Some of them say it's against the banks, and some of them say it's for the banks. They have got it that Cambreling should have give out in Congress that it was going to help the banks and keep them up; and others, on the contrary, say that Old Tom Benton swears that it won't leave so much as the skin of a corporated company 'twixt Down East and the Mississippi. And they say, moreover, that little Martin lays dark about it."

"What does the Globe give out concerning of it?" inquired Neal.

"Well, the Globe," replied Sam Pivot, the a.s.sessor of our county, who was out for sheriff, and who was very cautious in all his opinions, "is, as I take it, a little dubious. Sometimes he makes this Sub-Treasury a smasher to all banks; and then again he fetches it up as a sort of staff to prop the good ones and to knock down the cripples. Last fall, just before the New York election, he rather b.u.t.tered the banks, seeing that the Democracy in that quarter hadn't made up their minds to run as strong against the laboring people as they are willing to do over here in the South. But in April, when the Virginny elections was up, he was as savage as a meat-ax;--and I rather expect, from what I see in the President's message, that it isn't yet fairly understood whether the Sub-Treasury is to kill or cure the banking system."

"It's a pig in a poke, to make the best of it," said Abel Brawn; "and is flung before the people now because Van hasn't got nothing better to offer us, and not because he values it above an old shoe. To my thinking, when the people have decided against a law, as they have done now against this Sub-Treasury, as you call it, twice in Congress, a President of the United States ought to have that respect for the will of the people to let it drop. That's what I call Whig Democracy--though it mayn't be yourn."

"Never!" exclaimed Tom Crop, the constable of our Borough. "If the people go agin the Dimocracy, the Dimocracy ought to put them down. We go for principle; and it's our business to try it over and over again, until we carry it. Truth is mighty and _will_ prevail, as the old Gineral says."

"I have never been able," said Neal Hopper, "rightly to make out what this Sub-Treasury is, anyhow. If any man knows, let him tell me."

"What does that signify?" answered Crop. "Some calls it a divorce--but betwixt who I don't know, and what's more, I don't care. It's for the poor man we are a fighting, against the rich. The Whigs are for making the poor poorer, and the rich richer--and I say any man who goes against the Sub-Treasury, can't have no respect for Dimmicratic principles."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Abel Brawn; "ever since the old Federals took hold of General Jackson's skirts, and joined him in breaking down the banks, they have been plotting to keep their heads above water--and so they set about making experiments right and left, to see if they couldn't hit upon something new to please the people. But, bless you--they don't know no more about the people than they do about making horseshoes; and that's the reason why they have been such bunglers in all their works: and the end has been to bring us into such a pickle as no country ever was in before. They have teetotally ruinated everything they have laid their hands on--and now they come out and say 'the people expect too much from the Government,' and by way of making that saying good, they have got up this Sub-Treasury, which is nothing more nor less than a contrivance to get all the money of the country into their own strong box, knowing that when they have _the money_, they have got _the power_, for as long as they please. That's an old Federal trick, which they understand as well as any men in the world. Now the people, who see into this scheme, don't like it, and so they vote it down in Congress. Well, what does these Federals do then? Submit? No--to be sure not--that's not their principle. They go at it again; set to drilling of Congress, and by promising this man, and buying off that one with an office, and setting their papers to telling all sorts of lies, they get the country so confounded at last that it doesn't know whether it is on its head or its heels. But the worst of it is, these very Federals--some of them real old Blue Lights--go about preaching about rich and poor, and sowing enmity between them; and they work so diligent upon this heat, that many a simple man at last believes them. It's all a trick--a mean, sneaking deceit, which I am ashamed to think any honest poor man in this happy country of ours could be taken in by for one minute. But we never had this talk until we got Federal measures and Federal men at the head of the Government. Who are the rich that they talk about? Why, it is every man who has sense enough to know that they are imposing on him, whether he be worth a million or worth only five hundred dollars--unless indeed it be one of their own rich men, and then they can't praise him too much. Is industry a sin in this land, that when it has earned a little something for a wet day, the man who has thriven by it must be held up as an enemy to his country? Does it hurt a man's patriotism, when he sends his children to school, and works until he can buy a tract of land to start them well in life--or when he rents a pew in church, and carries his family there to teach them to fear G.o.d and keep his commandments? Is it to be told _against_ a man, that his neighbors count him to be frugal and thrifty, and that he is considered respectable in the world? Yet that is your new fashioned Democracy, which wants to put every one in the dust who doesn't idle away his time and squander his substance, and let his family go to rack, whilst he strolls about the country bawling Democracy. Thank G.o.d! the Democracy I've larnt in my time has taught me to do to others as I would have others do to me; and which has imbibed into my mind the principle that I am a freeman, and have a right to think for myself, to speak for myself, and to act for myself, without having a string put through my nose to lead me wherever it suits a set of scheming, lying, cunning politicians to have me for their benefit. Democracy's not what it used to be, or you would never find the people putting up with this eternal dictation from the President and his friends to Congress and to the nation, what he will have, and what he won't have:--that's what I call rank monarchy, and I will fight against it to my latest breath.

"You will have a chance to judge for yourselves whether the President dictates to the people or not, in this very matter of the Sub-Treasury:--wait till the next session of Congress:--the bill has just been rejected a second time. You will see that Martin isn't a going to give it up, but will bring it forward again and again--until at last, I make no doubt, he will get a Congress shabby enough to do his bidding, and pa.s.s it;--and many of the very men who are against it to-day, will abandon their own opinions and go for it, for no other reason in the world but that they will be afraid of their nose-leaders, who will tell them they are no Democrats unless they support the President. It is nothing more nor less than _enlisting_ men in the service, and marching and countermarching them whichever way the _officers_ choose; besides bringing every man to a drum-head who dares to disobey orders."

"What's Tom Benton's notion?" inquired Neal Hopper.

"He goes for the Sub-Treasury out and out," said Pivot.

"In course, he does, all hollow," interrupted Tom Crop, with rather a fierce frown and an angry tone, designed to express his indignant feeling at the sentiments uttered by Abel Brawn, and which sternness of countenance had been gradually gathering during the whole time occupied by the Blacksmith's discourse. "There's none of this slang in him. He's agin all Monypolies, and for the rale Const.i.tutional Currency--and them's the genuine Dimmicratic principles:--leastways, they've come about so now, whatever they might 'a been in times past. Old Tom's the first man what ever found out what the Const.i.tutional Currency raly was, and sot the Dimmicrats a goin' on the Hard-Money track! And, besides, don't I know these banks?--they're nuisances in grain, and naturally as good as strikes a poor man in his vitals. I've seed it myself. Here was Joe Plumb, the cider-press maker, got a note from Jerry Lantern down here at the crossroads, for settin' up his cider-press, and he heaved it in the bank for them to collect it--and what does the bank do, but go and _purtest_ it! That's the way they treat a poor man like Joe Plumb, what's obliged to work for his livin':--would they 'a sarved a Big Bug so? No--don't tell me about the banks! I'm sick a hearin' on 'em."

This discussion was now interrupted by the approach of Theodore Fog, Flan Sucker, and Sim Travers. By this addition to the company, the New Lights gained an overwhelming preponderance of numbers over their adversaries. Indeed, Abel Brawn, and Davy Post, the wheelwright, were the only Whigs in the a.s.semblage; and the consequence was that Abel, who fought them all pretty manfully at first, was obliged to give in so far as to remain silent--with the exception of a random shot, which now and then he let off by way of repartee--Abel not being bad at that. Davy Post was naturally a silent man, and, therefore, did not pretend to be a speaker on this occasion.

As soon as Theodore Fog was informed what was the topic in debate, and especially of the doubts which seemed to be prevalent regarding the Sub-Treasury, he took a station against the door-post, where the whole company gathered around him; and, being now in an oratorical mood, he began to address the auditory in something like a speech:--

"Gentlemen," said he, at the same time drawing, with a jerk, his neckcloth away and flaunting it in his hand, "in a free government we have no secrets. Freedom of Opinion and its twin-sister Freedom of Discussion are chartered libertines that float upon the ambient air consecrated to the Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation----"

"Hurra for old The!" shouted Sim Travers.

"Ya--hoop--halloo--go it!" yelled Flan Sucker, with a wild and deafening scream, which sufficiently manifested the fact that he was most noisily drunk.