he Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a
clever man--keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not
thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn
hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant
skirmishing; deft, but never deep; much moved too by the opinions of his
permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well
with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of
them--the air of originality, the really original air he threw around
them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his
noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic
as it as saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind.
If that minister lived long he would be forced to adopt and advocate
in as pretty a manner the policy he was dissecting. Lord Munnibagge, a
great authority in economic matters, said that a weaker case had never
been presented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony
at imperial expense was at once to rob the pockets of the rich and to
decrease our labor-power. There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby
could not starve in a country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge) had
never heard of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide-spread
distress as was represented by the noble lord. There were occasional
periods of stagnation in trade, and no doubt in these periods the poorer
classes would suffer; but trade was elastic; and even if it were granted
that the present was a period when employment had failed, the time was
not far off when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all
other babies would not then wish to go away. People were always making
exaggerated statements about the condition of the poor. He (Lord
Munnibagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, though
temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy
state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown
by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing richer every day.
(Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby must be growing richer with the rest.
Was not that a complete answer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries?
(Cheers and laughter.) That the population of a country was a great
fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle of political economy.
He thought, from the high rates of wages, that there were not too
many but too few laborers in the country. He s