The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 9

FOX [rising amid cheers]

At this late hour, After the riddling fire the Act has drawn on't, My words shall hold the House the briefest while.

Too obvious to the most unwilling mind It grows that the existence of this law Experience and reflection have condemned.

Professing to do much, it makes for nothing; Not only so; while feeble in effect It shows it vicious in its principle.

Engaging to raise men for the common weal It sets a harmful and unequal tax Capriciously on our communities.-- The annals of a century fail to show More flagrant cases of oppressiveness Than those this statute works to perpetrate, Which [like all Bills this favoured statesman frames, And clothes with tapestries of rhetoric Disguising their real web of commonplace]

Though held as shaped for English bulwarking, Breathes in its heart perversities of party, And instincts toward oligarchic power, Galling the many to relieve the few! [Cheers.]

Whatever breadth and sense of equity Inform the methods of this minister, Those mitigants nearly always trace their root To measures that his predecessors wrought.

And ere his Government can dare a.s.sert Superior claim to England's confidence, They owe it to their honour and good name To furnish better proof of such a claim Than is revealed by the abortiveness Of this thing called an Act for our Defence.

To the great gifts of its artificer No member of this House is more disposed To yield full recognition than am I.

No man has found more reason so to do Through the long roll of disputatious years Wherein we have stood opposed....

But if one single fact could counsel me To entertain a doubt of those great gifts, And cancel faith in his capacity, That fact would be the vast imprudence shown In staking recklessly repute like his On such an Act as he has offered us-- So false in principle, so poor in fruit.

Sir, the achievements and effects thereof Have furnished not one fragile argument Which all the partiality of friendship Can kindle to consider as the mark Of a clear, vigorous, freedom-fostering mind!

[He sits down amid lengthy cheering from the Opposition.]

SHERIDAN

My summary shall be brief, and to the point.-- The said right honourable Prime Minister Has thought it proper to declare my speech The jesting of an irresponsible;-- Words from a person who has never read The Act he claims him urgent to repeal.

Such quips and qizzings [as he reckons them]

He implicates as gathered from long h.o.a.rds Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic art On the devoted, gentle, shrinking head O' the right incomparable gentleman! [Laughter.]

But were my humble, solemn, sad oration [Laughter.]

Indeed such rattle as he rated it, Is it not strange, and pa.s.sing precedent, That the ill.u.s.trious chief of Government Should have uprisen with such indecent speed And strenuously replied? He, sir, knows well That vast and luminous talents like his own Could not have been demanded to choke off A witcraft marked by nothing more of weight Than ignorant irregularity!

_Nec Deus intersit_--and so-and-so-- Is a well-worn citation whose close fit None will perceive more clearly in the Fane Than its presiding Deity opposite. [Laughter.]

His thunderous answer thus perforce condemns him!

Moreover, to top all, the while replying, He still thought best to leave intact the reasons On which my blame was founded!

Thus, them, stands My motion unimpaired, convicting clearly Of dire perversion that capacity We formerly admired.-- [Cries of "Oh, oh."]

This minister Whose circ.u.mventions never circ.u.mvent, Whose coalitions fail to coalesce; This dab at secret treaties known to all, This darling of the aristocracy--

[Laughter, "Oh, oh," cheers, and cries of "Divide."]

Has brought the millions to the verge of ruin, By pledging them to Continental quarrels Of which we see no end! [Cheers.]

[The members rise to divide.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

It irks me that they thus should Yea and Nay As though a power lay in their oraclings, If each decision work unconsciously, And would be operant though unloosened were A single lip!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

There may react on things Some influence from these, indefinitely, And even on That, whose outcome we all are.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Hypotheses!--More boots it to remind The younger here of our ethereal band And hierarchy of Intelligences, That this thwart Parliament whose moods we watch-- So insular, empiric, un-ideal-- May figure forth in sharp and salient lines To retrospective eyes of afterdays, And print its legend large on History.

For one cause--if I read the signs aright-- To-night's appearance of its Minister In the a.s.sembly of his long-time sway Is near his last, and themes to-night launched forth Will take a tincture from that memory, When me recall the scene and circ.u.mstance That hung about his pleadings.--But no more; The ritual of each party is rehea.r.s.ed, Dislodging not one vote or prejudice; The ministers their ministries retain, And Ins as Ins, and Outs as Outs, remain.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Meanwhile what of the Foeman's vast array That wakes these tones?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Abide the event, young Shade: Soon stars will shut and show a spring-eyed dawn, And sunbeams fountain forth, that will arouse Those forming bands to full activity.

[An honourable member reports that he spies strangers.]

A timely token that we dally here!

We now cast off these mortal manacles, And speed us seaward.

[The Phantoms vanish from the Gallery. The members file out to the lobbies. The House and Westminster recede into the films of night, and the point of observation shifts rapidly across the Channel.]

SCENE IV

THE HARBOUR OF BOULOGNE

[The morning breaks, radiant with early sunlight. The French Army of Invasion is disclosed. On the hills on either side of the town and behind appear large military camps formed of timber huts. Lower down are other camps of more or less permanent kind, the whole affording accommodation for one hundred and fifty thousand men.

South of the town is an extensive basin surrounded by quays, the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and long narrow pinnaces arranged for many oars.

Timber, saw-mills, and new-cut planks spread in profusion around, and many of the town residences are seen to be adapted for warehouses and infirmaries.]

DUMB SHOW

Moving in this scene are countless companies of soldiery, engaged in a drill practice of embarking and disembarking, and of hoisting horses into the vessels and landing them again. Vehicles bearing provisions of many sorts load and unload before the temporary warehouses. Further off, on the open land, bodies of troops are at field-drill. Other bodies of soldiers, half stripped and encrusted with mud, are labouring as navvies in repairing the excavations.

An English squadron of about twenty sail, comprising a ship or two of the line, frigates, brigs, and luggers, confronts the busy spectacle from the sea.

The Show presently dims and becomes broken, till only its flashes and gleams are visible. Anon a curtain of cloud closes over it.

SCENE V

LONDON. THE HOUSE OF A LADY OF QUALITY