But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite
Barnacle himself, in the odour of Circumlocution--with the very smell of
Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who
had risen to official heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and
that was, My Lords, that I am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister
of this free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the
charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to
damp the independent self-reliance, of its people.
That was, in other words, that this great statesman was always yet to be told that it
behoved the Pilot of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private
loaf and fish trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of hard
pumping, to keep the ship above water without him. On this sublime
discovery in the great art How not to do it, Lord Decimus had long
sustained the highest glory of the Barnacle family; and let any
ill-advised member of either House but try How to do it by bringing in
a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and buried when Lord
Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said, soaring
into indignant majesty as the Circumlocution cheering soared around
him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it behoved him as the
Minister of this free country, to set bounds to the philanthropy,
to cramp the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the
enterprise, to damp the independent self-reliance, of its people. The
discovery of this Behoving Machine was the discovery of the political
perpetual motion. It never wore out, though it was always going round
and round in all the State Departments.
And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was
William Barnacle, who had made the ever-famous coalition with Tudor
Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recipe for
How not to do it; sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it fresh
out of him, with a 'First, I will beg you, sir, to inform the House what
Precedent we have for the course into which the honourable gentleman
would precipitate us;' sometimes asking the honourable gentleman to
favour him with his own version of the Precedent; sometimes telling
the honourable gentleman that he (William Barnacle) would search for a
Precedent; and oftentimes crushing the honourable gentleman flat on
the spot by telling him there was no Precedent. But Precedent and
Precipitate were, under all circumstances, the well-matched pair of
battle-horses of this able Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy
honourable gentleman had been trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to
precipitate William Barnacle into this--William Barnacle still put it to
the House, and (at second-hand or so) to the country, whether he was to
be precipitated into this.