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.