Sir Jabesh Windbag
Oliver Cromwell, whose body they hung on their Tyburn Gallows
because he had found the Christian Religion inexecutable in this
country, remains to me by far the remarkablest Governor we have
had here for the last five centuries or so. For the last five
centuries, there has been no Governor among us with anything like
similar talent; and for the last two centuries, no Governor, we
may say, with the possibility of similar talent,--with an idea in
the heart of him capable of inspiring similar talent, capable of
coexisting therewith. When you consider that Oliver believed in
a God, the difference between Oliver's position and that of any
subsequent Governor of this Country becomes, the more you reflect
on it, the more immeasurable!
Oliver, no volunteer in Public Life, but plainly a ballotted
soldier strictly ordered thither, enters upon Public Life;
comports himself there like a man who carried his own life itself
in his hand; like a man whose Great Commander's eye was always
on him. Not without results. Oliver, well-advanced in years,
finds now, by Destiny and his own Deservings, or as he himself
better phrased it, by wondrous successive 'Births of Providence,'
the Government of England put into his hands. In senate-house
and battle-field, in counsel and in action, in private and in
public, this man has proved himself a man: England and the voice
of God, through waste awful whirlwinds and environments, speaking
to his great heart, summon him to assert formally, in the way of
solemn Public Fact and as a new piece of English Law, what
informally and by Nature's eternal Law needed no asserting, That
he, Oliver, was the Ablest-Man of England, the King of England;
that he, Oliver, would undertake governing England. His way of
making this same 'assertion,' the one way he had of making it,
has given rise to immense criticism: but the assertion itself in
what way soever 'made,' is it not somewhat of a solemn one,
somewhat of a tremendous one!
And now do but contrast this Oliver with my right honourable
friend Sir Jabesh Windbag, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Viscount
Mealymouth, Earl of Windlestraw, or what other Cagliostro,
Cagliostrino, Cagliostraccio, the course of Fortune and
Parliamentary Majorities has constitutionally guided to that
dignity, any time during these last sorrowful hundred-and-fifty
years! Windbag, weak in the faith of a God, which he believes
only at Church on Sundays, if even then; strong only in the
faith that Paragraphs and Plausibilities bring votes; that Force
of Public Opinion, as he calls it, is the primal Necessity of
Things, and highest God we have:--Windbag, if we will consider
him, has a problem set before him which may be ranged in the
impossible class. He is a Columbus minded to sail to the
indistinct country of NOWHERE, to the indistinct country of
WHITHERWARD, by the _friendship_ of those same waste-tumbling
Water-Alps and howling waltz of All the Winds; not by conquest
of them and in spite of them, but by friendship of them, when
once _they_ have made up their mind! He is the most original
Columbus I ever saw. Nay, his problem is not an impossible one:
he will infallibly _arrive_ at that same country of NOWHERE; his
indistinct Whitherward will be a _Thither_ward! In the Ocean
Abysses and Locker of Davy Jones, there certainly enough do he
and _his_ ship's company, and all their cargo and navigatings, at
last find lodgement.
Oliver knew that his America lay THERE, Westward Ho;--and it was
not entirely by _friendship_ of the Water-Alps, and yeasty insane
Froth-Oceans, that he meant to get thither! He sailed
accordingly; had compass-card, and Rules of Navigation,--older
and greater than these Froth-Oceans, old as the Eternal God! Or
again, do but think of this. Windbag in these his probable five
years of office has to prosper and get Paragraphs: the
Paragraphs of these five years must be his salvation, or he is a
lost man; redemption nowhere in the Worlds or in the Times
discoverable for him. Oliver too would like his Paragraphs;
successes, popularities in these five years are not undesirable
to him: but mark, I say, this enormous circumstance: _after_
these five years are gone and done, comes an Eternity for Oliver!
Oliver has to appear before the Most High judge: the utmost flow
of Paragraphs, the utmost ebb of them, is now, in strictest
arithmetic, verily no matter at all; its exact value _zero;_ an
account altogether erased! Enormous;--which a man, in these
days, hardly fancies with an effort! Oliver's Paragraphs are all
done, his battles, division-lists, successes all summed: and now
in that awful unerring Court of Review, the real question first
rises, Whether he has succeeded at all; whether he has not been
defeated miserably forevermore? Let him come with world-wide
_Io-Paens,_ these avail him not. Let him come covered over with
the world's execrations, gashed with ignominious death-wounds,
the gallows-rope about his neck: what avails that? The word
is, Come thou brave and faithful; the word is, Depart thou
quack and accursed!
O Windbag, my right honourable friend, in very truth I pity thee.
I say, these Paragraphs, and low or loud votings of thy poor
fellow-blockheads of mankind, will never guide thee in any
enterprise at all. Govern a country on such guidance? Thou
canst not make a pair of shoes, sell a pennyworth of tape, on
such. No, thy shoes are vamped up falsely to meet the market;
behold, the leather only _seemed_ to be tanned; thy shoes melt
under me to rubbishy pulp, and are not veritable mud-defying
shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of shoes,--thou
unfortunate, and I! O my right honourable friend, when the
Paragraphs flowed in, who was like Sir Jabesh? On the swelling
tide he mounted; higher, higher, triumphant, heaven-high. But
the Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise Paragraphs needs must:
Sir Jabesh lies stranded, sunk and forever sinking in ignominious
ooze; the Mud-nymphs, and ever-deepening bottomless Oblivion,
his portion to eternal time. 'Posterity?' Thou appealest to
Posterity, thou? My right honourable friend, what will Posterity
do for thee! The voting of Posterity, were it continued through
centuries in thy favour, will be quite inaudible, extra-forensic,
without any effect whatever. Posterity can do simply nothing for
a man; nor even seem to do much, if the man be not brainsick.
Besides, to tell thee truth, the bets are a thousand to one,
Posterity will not hear of thee, my right honourable friend!
Posterity, I have found, has generally his own Windbags
sufficiently trumpeted in all market-places, and no leisure to
attend to ours. Posterity, which has made of Norse Odin a
similitude, and of Norman William a brute monster, what will or
can it make of English Jabesh? O Heavens, 'Posterity!'
"These poor persecuted Scotch Covenanters," said I to my inquiring
Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at command, _"ils
s'en appelaient a"_--_"A la Posterite,"_ interrupted he, helping
me out.--_"Ah, Monsieur, non, mille fois non!_ They appealed to
the Eternal God; not to Posterity at all! _C'etait different."_