LONDON. THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS [A long chamber with a gallery on each side supported by thin columns having gilt Ionic capitals. Three round-headed windows are at the further end, above the Speaker’s chair, which is backed by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the lion and the unicorn. The windows are uncurtained, one being open, through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom without. Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass chandelier which hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and in branches projecting from the galleries. The House is sitting, the benches, which extend round to the Speaker’s elbows, being closely packed, and the galleries likewise full. Among the members present on the Government side are PITT and other ministers with their supporters, including CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, LORD C. SOMERSET, ERSKINE, W. DUNDAS, HUSKISSON, ROSE, BEST, ELLIOT, DALLAS, and the general body of the party. On the opposite side are noticeable FOX, SHERIDAN, WINDHAM, WHITBREAD, GREY, T. GRENVILLE, TIERNEY, EARL TEMPLE, PONSONBY, G. AND H. WALPOLE, DUDLEY NORTH, and TIMOTHY SHELLEY. Speaker ABBOT occupies the Chair.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS As prelude to the scene, as means to aid Our younger comrades in its construing, Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief The reasonings here of late—to whose effects Words of to-night form sequence. [The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a minor recitative.]

ANGEL I [aerial music] Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness, Sat in the halls of the Kingdom’s high Councillors, Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency Wanned as with winter the national mind.

ANGEL II England stands forth to the sword of Napoléon Nakedly—not an ally in support of her; Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently; Projects of range and scope poorly defined.

ANGEL I Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.— Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize, Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.

ANGEL II Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible, Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship, Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless, Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.

ANGELS I AND II So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences, Hear them speak,—gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,— Midst their admonishments little conceiving how Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [to the Spirit of the Years] Let us put on and suffer for the nonce The feverish fleshings of Humanity, And join the pale debaters here convened. So may thy soul be won to sympathy By donning their poor mould.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS I’ll humour thee, Though my unpassioned essence could not change Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!

SPIRIT IRONIC ’Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to hear this Pitt sung so strenuously! I’ll be the third of the incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.

SPIRIT SINISTER And I the fourth. There’s sure to be something in my line toward, where politicians gathered together! [The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise of ordinary strangers.]

SHERIDAN [rising] The Bill I would have leave to introduce Is framed, sir, to repeal last Session’s Act, By party-scribes intituled a Provision For England’s Proper Guard; but elsewhere known As Mr. Pitt’s new Patent Parish Pill. [Laughter.] The ministerial countenances, I mark, Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion— Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be That, with a haughty and unwavering faith In their own battering-rams of argument, They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk To our hope’s sheer bottom, whence a miracle Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe, They are amazed at our rude disrespect In making mockery of an English Law Sprung sacred from the King’s own Premier’s brain! —I hear them snort; but let them wince at will, My duty must be done; shall be done quickly By citing some few facts. An Act for our defence! It weakens, not defends; and oversea Swoln France’s despot and his myrmidons This moment know it, and can scoff thereat. Our people know it too—those who can peer Behind the scenes of this poor painted show Called soldiering!—The Act has failed, must fail, As my right honourable friend well proved When speaking t’other night, whose silencing By his right honourable vis a vis Was of the genuine Governmental sort, And like the catamarans their sapience shaped All fizzle and no harm. [Laughter.] The Act, in brief, Effects this much: that the whole force of England Is strengthened by—eleven thousand men! So sorted that the British infantry Are now eight hundred less than heretofore! In Ireland, where the glamouring influence Of the right honourable gentleman Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns, Where he is held in absolute veneration, His method has so quickened martial fire As to bring in—one man. O would that man Might meet my sight! [Laughter.] A Hercules, no doubt, A god-like emanation from this Act, Who with his single arm will overthrow All Buonaparte’s legions ere their keels Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore!... Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind. [He sits down amid cheers. The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt rises. During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch crying the hour.]

PITT Not one on this side but appreciates Those mental gems and airy pleasantries Flashed by the honourable gentleman, Who shines in them by birthright. Each device Of drollery he has laboured to outshape, [Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,] Displays that are the conjurings of the moment, [Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on]— Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace, Stored without stint of toil through days and months— He heaps into one mass, and light and fans As fuel for his flaming eloquence, Mouthed and maintained without a thought or care If germane to the theme, or not at all. Now vain indeed it were should I assay To match him in such sort. For, sir, alas, To use imagination as the ground Of chronicle, take myth and merry tale As texts for prophecy, is not my gift Being but a person primed with simple fact, Unprinked by jewelled art.—But to the thing. The preparations of the enemy, Doggedly bent to desolate our land, Advance with a sustained activity. They are seen, they are known, by you and by us all. But they evince no clear-eyed tentative In furtherance of the threat, whose coming off, Ay, years may yet postpone; whereby the Act Will far outstrip him, and the thousands called Duly to join the ranks by its provisions, In process sure, if slow, will ratch the lines Of English regiments—seasoned, cool, resolved— To glorious length and firm prepotency. And why, then, should we dream of its repeal Ere profiting by its advantages? Must the House listen to such wilding words As this proposal, at the very hour When the Act’s gearing finds its ordered grooves And circles into full utility? The motion of the honourable gentleman Reminds me aptly of a publican Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing’s past, Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting, Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head, And cry in acid voice: The ale is new! Brew old, you varlets; cast this slop away! [Cheers.] But gravely, sir, I would conclude to-night, And, as a serious man on serious things, I now speak here.... I pledge myself to this: Unprecedented and magnificent As were our strivings in the previous war, Our efforts in the present shall transcend them, As men will learn. Such efforts are not sized By this light measuring-rule my critic here Whips from his pocket like a clerk-o’-works!... Tasking and toilsome war’s details must be, And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,— Not in a moment’s stroke extemporized. The strange fatality that haunts the times Wherein our lot is cast, has no example. Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom; We have to mark their lourings, and to face them. Sir, reading thus the full significance Of these big days, large though my lackings be, Can any hold of those who know my past That I, of all men, slight our safeguarding? No: by all honour no!—Were I convinced That such could be the mind of members here, My sorrowing thereat would doubly shade The shade on England now! So I do trust All in the House will take my tendered word, And credit my deliverance here to-night, That in this vital point of watch and ward Against the threatenings from yonder coast We stand prepared; and under Providence Shall fend whatever hid or open stroke A foe may deal. [He sits down amid loud ministerial cheers, with symptoms of great exhaustion.]

WINDHAM The question that compels the House to-night Is not of differences in wit and wit, But if for England it be well or no To null the new-fledged Act, as one inept For setting up with speed and hot effect The red machinery of desperate war.— Whatever it may do, or not, it stands, A statesman’ raw experiment. If ill, Shall more experiments and more be tried In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand For sureness of proceeding? Must this House Exchange safe action based on practised lines For yet more ventures into risks unknown To gratify a quaint projector’s whim, While enemies hang grinning round our gates To profit by mistake? My friend who spoke Found comedy in the matter. Comical As it may be in parentage and feature, Most grave and tragic in its consequence This Act may prove. We are moving thoughtlessly, We squander precious, brief, life-saving time On idle guess-games. Fail the measure must, Nay, failed it has already; and should rouse Resolve in its progenitor himself To move for its repeal! [Cheers.]

WHITBREAD I rise but to subjoin a phrase or two To those of my right honourable friend. I, too, am one who reads the present pinch As passing all our risks heretofore. For why? Our bold and reckless enemy, Relaxing not his plans, has treasured time To mass his monstrous force on all the coigns From which our coast is close assailable. Ay, even afloat his concentrations work: Two vast united squadrons of his sail Move at this moment viewless on the seas.— Their whereabouts, untraced, unguessable, Will not be known to us till some black blow Be dealt by them in some undreamt-of quarter To knell our rule. That we are reasonably enfenced therefrom By such an Act is but a madman’s dream.... A commonwealth so situate cries aloud For more, far mightier, measures! End an Act In Heaven’s name, then, which only can obstruct The fabrication of more trusty tackle For building up an army! [Cheers.]

BATHURST Sir, the point To any sober mind is bright as noon; Whether the Act should have befitting trial Or be blasphemed at sight. I firmly hold The latter loud iniquity.—One task Is theirs who would inter this corpse-cold Act— [So said]—to bring to birth a substitute! Sir, they have none; they have given no thought to one, And this their deeds incautiously disclose Their cloaked intention and most secret aim! With them the question is not how to frame A finer trick to trounce intrusive foes, But who shall be the future ministers To whom such trick against intrusive foes, Whatever it may prove, shall be entrusted! They even ask the country gentlemen To join them in this job. But, God be praised, Those gentlemen are sound, and of repute; Their names, their attainments, and their blood, [Ironical Opposition cheers.] Safeguard them from an onslaught on an Act For ends so sinister and palpable! [Cheers and jeerings.]

FULLER I disapprove of censures of the Act.— All who would entertain such hostile thought Would swear that black is white, that night is day. No honest man will join a reckless crew Who’d overthrow their country for their gain! [Laughter.]

TIERNEY It is incumbent on me to declare In the last speaker’s face my censure, based On grounds most clear and constitutional.— An Act it is that studies to create A standing army, large and permanent; Which kind of force has ever been beheld With jealous-eyed disfavour in this House. It makes for sure oppression, binding men To serve for less than service proves it worth Conditioned by no hampering penalty. For these and late-spoke reasons, then, I say, Let not the Act deface the statute-book, But blot it out forthwith. [Hear, hear.]

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 assert 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 hoards 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 passing precedent, That the illustrious 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 circumventions never circumvent, 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 assembly 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 circumstance That hung about his pleadings.—But no more; The ritual of each party is rehearsed, 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.]