Chapter V (1)

On the evening succeeding to the day at the _chacra_, a small evening party--or tertulia, as it is called--was held at the town residence of Luis Mendoza. Our friends Thorne and Griffin were there, two midshipmen belonging to an English man-of-war lying in the roads, with such a sprinkling of young ladies and gentlemen as could be called on such a short notice. Mendoza and Le Brun were closeted hard at work by themselves in an adjoining room. The daughters of the former strove to keep up an appearance of gaiety which they could not feel; even Thorne himself was more silent than was his wont, and it seemed as if the gloomy prospect of the times had its effect in diffusing a shade of sadness over the countenances of those who had met to be gay.

The midshipmen were the only parties who appeared really to enjoy themselves. They feared their first-lieutenant more than Rosas, and him they had left on board: they had come on shore in quest of amusement, and like birds free from the cage, they fluttered about in the full hey-day of enjoyment. Happy themselves, they conceived all around them to be the same, and at last diffused a little of their light-heartedness to others.

“Come, Mr Thorne, we have had plenty of singing and music,” said Anita Mendoza, forcing herself to exertion: “I make you the ‘bastonero.’ What say you to dancing now?”

“A fair challenge! Gentlemen, choose your partners for a quadrille. Miss Anita, will you favour me with your hand. Gentlemen, please hand round refreshments to the ladies to give them a little life before we begin. Griffin, the pleasure of a glass of champagne with you. Here, my young captains, you come and wet your mustaches. _Vive la bagatelle._ Now, then, gentlemen.” Thus rattled on Tom Thorne, seeking to rouse up the flagging spirits of the company; but he himself had seldom been in worse spirits--he scarce knew how.

“I have strange forebodings this night,” said Mr Thorne to Anita Mendoza, as he stood beside her during an interval in the dance. “I see both you and your sisters are dull, too; your father and Le Brun are as busy as if this were to be the last night of their existence. Anita, I suspect that man--I wish to God your father would trust some foreigner--one native is not better than another, that is, not more secure.”

“_Por dios_, tell me, Mr Thorne, what do you suspect in Mr Le Brun? Tell me at once; tell me without reserve--it may not be too late yet?”

“I suspect him of being more intimate with the authorities than an honest man can be.”

“He allows he has influence with them, Mr Thorne; my father has the utmost confidence in him--their interests are bound up together; may he not honestly exert what influence he has for my father’s safety?”

“How can he have influence with them except he lends himself to their schemes and plots? Even were he honest in his intentions to secure Mendoza’s interests--and God forbid that he be not!--who can say that his influence will outweigh the value of Mendoza’s doubloons and lands?”

“Mr Thorne,” said Anita, during another interval in the dance, “I know that Señor Le Brun will _now_ use every effort in his power to secure my father and his interests. Have you--I beg you--I beg you most earnestly to answer me distinctly and at once, for we have not one moment to spare--have you any _positive_ knowledge of Le Brun’s acting a dishonourable part, of his being a spy in fact?”

“I have not.”

“Is he suspected of being so in the town?”

“As far as I know, he is not.”

“What are your reasons for suspecting him in respect to my father?”

“I met him in close and secret communication with the notorious ----.”

“My dear Mr Thorne, excuse me, I have heard all that explained by my father. His confidence must go further with me than the suspicion of another, even if that other be----Oh, Mr Thorne, you can scarcely fancy how much I am relieved, how much I am indebted to you for your frankness; but I _must_ trust Le Brun. And now, as the dance is finished--which, by the way,” said she with a smile, “you appear to have forgotten--I shall feel obliged to you for a glass of wine, for indeed I feel very faint.”

In spite of every exertion of our hero, the small party went off very stiffly, and at an early hour the whole company had disappeared except the two midshipmen, Thorne, and Griffin; when Mendoza and Le Brun entered the _sala_ with the air of men who had just escaped from a long, troublesome, and anxious job, and who rub their hands with delight at having finished it.

“Come, Le Brun,” said Mendoza, “after our long _sederunt_, let us have a glass of the best the girls can give us. Ha! Thorne, how are you? wherever you are there is sure to be champagne--so champagne be it.” But Le Brun declined, and bidding an affectionate adieu to the ladies, and making a formal bow to Thorne, he withdrew.

“Hang me if I like that man!” said Thorne.

“I never knew a man who flinched from his liquor stand by his friend; and I shall make a point of telling him so,” said Griffin, following up Thomas’s resentment.

“That may be the case in Ireland, friend, but cannot apply here,” said Mendoza. “But come, we can finish a bottle of champagne without any assistance. I leave you to-morrow, Thorne,” he said in a whisper: “the blood-hounds are on the _qui vive_, but you will see me double them.”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when a rap was heard at the door. A servant entered pale and trembling, to inform his master that two of the “friends of liberty” were at the door, and wished to speak to the Patron.

Had a thunderbolt fallen at their feet, the whole party could not have stood more aghast. Of the object of their visit at twelve o’clock at night, there could be no mistake. The ladies threw themselves upon their father and wept aloud; protesting with tears and sobs that they should never tear him from them. “Thorne, Griffin, young gentlemen, you will defend my father, will you not? They shall tear us in pieces before they separate us,” sobbed Anita, franticly. The midshipmen, in their enthusiasm, drew their swords. Thorne produced two small pistols from a great-coat pocket; but Griffin,--he was the most collected of the whole.

“Be cool, ladies; I will save your father. Thorne, give me your pistols. Servant, go to the door--say Mr Mendoza will be there in a moment--say he is putting on his cloak. Now, Mendoza, be a man--no time for acting the father or crying now. Ladies, one of you get me your father’s cloak and hat. Now, Mendoza, are you listening to me?”

“I am.”

“Well, then, come to the door with me--ask the gentlemen very politely what they want; of course they will invite you to accompany them to prison or somewhere or other--answer without hesitation you will be with them in one moment. This you will do with your cloak and hat on: give me then your cloak and hat--bid them advance;--I follow, with your cloak and hat on, as Don Luis Mendoza, and damn all consequences--pistols _versus_ knives,--hurrah!”

“But, sir,” commenced Mendoza.

“Not a word, sir, I have no family, and I would die to serve an honest man or bonny lassie: and, Thorne, you look after the ladies--never mind me, I have two pistols for their two knives.”

The thing was arranged as quickly as this has been told. And away went Griffin followed by the “friends of liberty.”

“Now, Mendoza, you must out at once,--it’s all Le Brun’s doings,--cut for your life,--cut,” said Thorne, “and run for my house. Ladies, this is no safe place for you--excuse me, will you honour my house. There is no time for ceremony, rather on with your cloaks. Young gentlemen, you’re escort--servant, your master’s pistols--Now then, ladies, are you ready?--Anita, my arm--friend, give Mariquita yours--you for the look-out, now heave a-head.” “Patricio,” cried Anita, “secure my father’s papers, and then look out for yourselves.” And the whole house was clear in less than ten minutes from the first rap at the door.

Mr Thorne and his interesting convoy arrived safe at the Calle Derecho without any interruption; but great was their dismay as time passed on and no Mendoza made his appearance. Early next morning Thorne was on foot to make his inquiries, but not a word could he hear of his whereabouts. The only consolation he could hold out to his fair and trembling guests was the probability that he might be concealed in some friend’s house, or might find his way on board of some vessel. “But cheer up, ladies, you at least are safe, both from Rosas and Le Brun; and what a comfort that would be to your old father if he knew it! Ladies, you are the mistresses of the house. I must send for a female servant to attend you, and you may send for some lady friend to keep you in countenance, if you can find one, or think it proper.--You will see the propriety of not moving out of doors for a few days. The only restriction I impose upon both of you is, that you never drive me away from your presence by even whispering a word about thanks. And now, ladies, excuse me--I am going to sally out on another voyage of inquiry,” and, before a word could be said in reply, he hurried from the room.

After running about till he was almost exhausted, Thorne repaired to the Sala de los Estrangeros residentes, or club-room of resident foreigners, for a little refreshment; and scarcely had he entered when Le Brun stood before him, pale, breathless, and wo-begone.

“Le Brun,” cried Thorne, “you are a spy, a traitor;--you are worse than I even conceived you to be. Leave me--fly this moment, or you meet your deserts from my hands and in this very place.”

“Thorne,” cried Le Brun with the most abject air, “I am the most miserable man in existence. I swear to you, by every thing that binds man to man, I was not the cause of Mendoza’s capture last night;--my life, sir, is in more peril than his. At this moment the emissaries of the police are at my heels, and ere sunset, I shall be in prison,--ere sunrise probably a corpse;--where is Mendoza?”

“He is not in prison?” demanded Thorne.

“No, no--he is not.”

“Then thank God he is in safer hands than yours or _your_ friends,--he is safe. Confess, Le Brun, that you seek him to save yourself?”

“He is safe, you say;--did you say he was safe?”

“I did,” said Thorne, who had no idea of Mendoza running any risk, except that of his falling into the hands of Rosas. “But begone, sir. I see your object;--you would now sell his life to save your own little miserable existence.”

“Mr Thorne,” said Le Brun, “I am too abject now to resent insults or injuries. Thanks be to Heaven! Mendoza is now safe;--my course is _now_ clear. I can prove to you now that, however base you may think me, I have his interest at heart.”

“Yes, after your own weak truckling schemes have failed. Go on, sir.”

“Thorne, my steps were tracked out to Mendoza’s _chacra_; my steps were watched to Mendoza’s house last night, he was seized, but, Thorne, not by my information--no, thank God! not by mine. After this confession, I ask you if I am not more to be pitied than despised. I may be upbraided as a spy and traitor, but I have always struggled to befriend Mendoza.”

“And why, Le Brun, are you so anxious to know of Mendoza?”

“If I find him not by sunset, I myself suffer the punishment intended for him.”

“I foresaw that, wretch.”

“Press me not too hard, Thorne; I thank Heaven that I alone shall be the victim; and yet, how I shudder at the thought, with all my sins upon me--no, I cannot bear to dream of it. Save me, Thorne!--save me! save me! I throw myself on my knees before you. I never wronged you--I have admired your firmness when I have cursed my own weakness. Save me! save me!”

“Confess, then, did you not mean to sell Mendoza to save yourself?”

“I know not my own motives, Thorne. I am entirely unmanned--ask me not to what lengths despair might have driven a guilty man. Believe me, I laboured anxiously and keenly for his safety to the neglect and danger of my own; for then my thoughts were ennobled by my aspirations for his daughter. I am too mean and degraded now to dream of matching myself with such purity; and I have sunk into mean grovelling selfishness. Thank God! he has escaped. I would not--no, it is impossible I could have betrayed Mendoza, the father of Anita, to have saved my own worthless self. The first sight of that old man’s honest self must have driven such demon thoughts from my mind. I sought Mendoza, Thorne, to give him these papers. Nay, do not frown so upon me: they are papers signed by himself last night disposing of the half of his property to me in the anticipation of my being his son-in-law; if he escapes his property may be disembargoed--mine never can be. Some papers of my own are there too; some of these claims of mine, Thorne, will be recoverable. I have not a relative in the world; pray give them when--oh, I shudder to think of it--give them to the family of Mendoza, give them to Anita.”

“Silence, wretched pettifogger! think not that Anita Mendoza can ever stoop to accept the wages of treachery. I may, I will try to save your own mean life. Sit down there, take advantage of the short time yet spared you to arrange your affairs. I am off to see what may be done to save you from Rosas, whom I despise more than I pity you!” and he rushed out of the room before the trembling Le Brun could thank him for his offered assistance.

Thorne was the creature of impulse. Possessed of a generous heart and warm temperament, he often conferred favours at the same time that he showered reproaches. He had known Le Brun as a respected and honoured member of society: he had never liked him--he was too prim, sober, and methodical, for his errant and jovial disposition. Le Brun’s steady, plodding business habits Tom Thorne had sometimes considered a kind of reproach to his own careless, hap-hazard way of conducting his affairs; and though he had never made regular approaches to gain the favour of Anita Mendoza, his vanity was offended to see the advances that the quiet, easy, insinuating address of Le Brun made, in gaining the affections of the only woman who ever interested him. For all these reasons he had ever disliked Le Brun, and now he despised him: but still, however dangerous it might be, he resolved, if possible, to save him; and while in this state of mind he fell in with the captain of an English man-of-war. It was usual for the English and French vessels-of-war in those dismal times to receive all fugitives who claimed their protection; and the Frenchmen even went so far as to walk through the streets in armed bodies, and receive among their number those whom persecution induced to claim their assistance. Thorne had little difficulty in persuading the captain to lend his assistance in carrying off an intended victim. His vessel was to sail that evening; many of his boats were on shore; and it was arranged that at four o’clock, when they were ready to start, a number of the seamen should find their way to the Sala by different routes; and as the Sala was not far from the beach, they anticipated no difficulty in carrying off Le Brun.

This being arranged, Thorne hurried to inform and prepare the fugitive. Le Brun was still there, and another was there also, heaping every term of opprobrium that could be fancied on that hapless and miserable individual.

“You scum of the sea, you! Will nothing I can say to you persuade you to be a gentleman? By the powers of Moll Kelly! I’ll bring in the marker to dust your hair with chalk powder--the only powder you know any thing about, you black-faced sheep! Faith! a sheep is innocent, and a ram will stand to its own defence: so the only resemblance you have to a sheep is the chance you have of----”

“Hallo there, Griffin!” cried Thorne, “don’t abuse Le Brun now: our friends with the lanterns are after him, and here we come to the rescue. Le Brun, there is not one moment to spare. English seamen are now at the door--they will take you safe to their ship in spite of the friends who are dodging you outside--and so good-bye. God forgive you!”

“Oh, Thorne, how can I?”

“Come, come, no blarney!” cried Griffin interrupting Le Brun. “By St Patrick, if he go, I go too--this place has become too hot for me--Thorne, I did not know the poor devil was in such trouble. There is my address, Thorne, please forward my luggage. Let us have a bottle of champagne before we start. I will recommend Le Brun to a warm half-deck passage to the captain; and when we land, wherever it may be, if he do not give me satisfaction, by the powers! I’ll take it. What say you, Thorne?”

“Now, Le Brun, all ready?” demanded Thorne.

“All ready, sir.”

“Here’s to you then, Griffin,” as Le Brun crept cautiously out of the room. “Spare his life, Griffin--he is not worth the risk of your exposing yourself for him: spare his life for the sake of the black-eyed girl; but don’t forget that he spoiled a merry evening for us out at the _chacra_. By the way, your hurried departure must be rather inconvenient to you; please take this, (offering him some money)--nay, friend, take it; your intended caning match may cost you as much for damages. Now hurry off, for I must not appear in this affair.” And so Le Brun the spy was hurried down to the beach amid a party of English seamen, to the great disappointment of two gentlemen with long cloaks, who were waiting to attend upon him until sunset, and who followed them still, with the view, probably of seeing him safely embarked, in spite of repeated adieus bowed to them by our friend Griffin, who begged of them not to trouble themselves any further.

All hands arrived safely on board; but whether Griffin had to refund any of Tom Thorne’s money for damages, or whether he pinked his friend, or was pinked himself, we have never heard.

Return we to Tom Thorne and his fair guests. Their rage at Le Brun’s treachery was modified by the news that their father had escaped--for that he was not in prison was an escape; and to all parties it appeared best, that they should wait in their present quarters until they should hear from him.

In the mean time, Tom Thorne’s position was a most singular one. A bachelor, we may say, by profession, he was harbouring two lovely girls--one of whom had often roused feelings in his breast that he could not easily account for: he was, moreover, their protector, he had been partly the cause of their misfortunes; they were, it might be said, fatherless and portionless; they interested every best feeling of his heart. Need we work out the progress of results? Tom found more attractions in their mild, subdued, but lively conversation than in the loud rolicsome sports in which he had hitherto been a leader; smiles banished or supplanted cigars, and the sparkle of fair eyes were more often in Tom’s thoughts than the sparkles of champagne. During this state of transmutation, Tom received a message that a friend wished to see him: the messenger was none to be relied on, but he brought a password--_ipso facto_. Tom went, and it was Mendoza he found. The old man had concealed himself in the house of a friend, until he thought all danger past. With prudent care he had concealed his retreat, even from his best friends; and well it was he had done so, for Thorne’s house was watched for several days.

“I have heard,” said the old man, “the care you have taken of my daughters: God reward you for it, I never can.”

“Excuse me, sir, you may,” said Thorne. “Give me the hand of Anita, and I shall be more than repaid. We will smuggle you off to Rio, or Monte Video; this storm will blow over--your political back-holdings will soon be forgotten in the greater criminality of others: your estates will yet be restored to you; and if they be not, I have sufficient to maintain you and your family, without even missing the resources of the _chacra_ or mourning over the ruined speculations of Don Felipe Le Brun.”

“Thorne, you are a man after my own heart. I have ever given you credit for stainless honesty of purpose: if my daughter accepts of you as her protector you shall have my blessing.”

Mendoza, with his daughters, sought temporary exile, the embargo was soon taken off their property, and Tom Thorne afterwards sought, in the sweet smiles and flashing eye of Anita Mendoza, an exchange for the idle luxuries of cigars and champagne. Let us hope that he found them.

A. M.

LETTER FROM A RAILWAY WITNESS IN LONDON.

MY DEAR BOGLE,--In the words of the venerable Joe Grimaldi,--“Here I am again!” swearing away before the committees at no allowance. The trade is not quite so good a one as it was two years ago, when any intelligent and thorough-going calculator of traffic commanded his own price, and therefore invariably stood at an exorbitant premium. Still it would be very wrong in me to grumble. Though there is a woful defalcation of new lines, there is still a good deal to be done in the way of Extensions and Amalgamations; and I am happy to tell you that I am presently in the pay of no less than three companies, who are driving branch lines through the pleasure-grounds of different proprietors. I recollect the day when, in the exuberance of my greenness, I used to feel a sort of idiotical compassion for the situation of the men of land. I used to picture to myself the hardship of having your nice green policy cut into shreds by the forks of some confounded Junction--of seeing your ancestral trees go down like ninepins, before the axe of a callous engineer--of having sleep banished from your eyes by the roar of the engine, which sweeps past night and day, with disgusting punctuality, within fifty paces of your threshold--and of beholding some fine forenoon your first-born son conveyed a mangled corpse from the rail, because the company, out of sheer parsimony, have neglected to fence in their line, which goes slick through the centre of your garden; and the poor little innocent, in the absence of Girzy, then flirting among the gooseberries with the gardener, has been tempted to stray upon the irons in pursuit of an occasional butterfly! But I am thankful to say that I have now got rid of all such visionary scruples. Thanks to Sir Robert Peel, I have learned a new lesson in political economy. I have become a convert to the doctrine, that land is nothing else than manufactures; and I snap my fingers in derision at protection in all its shapes. Would you believe it, Bogle? I was giving evidence yesterday on behalf of the Clachandean railway--part of which, I am sorry to observe, has sunk into the centre of a bog--against a thick-headed proprietor, who has absolutely been insane enough to oppose, for three successive sessions, a branch line, which is to run through his estate for the purpose of communicating with some bathing-machines. The property has been in his family for some four or five hundred years. The mansion-house is an ordinary kind of tumble-down old affair, with turrets like pepper-boxes on the corners, and the fragment of an abbey behind it. There is no timber worth speaking of in the policy, except half-a-dozen great useless yew-trees, beneath which they show you a carved stone, that covers the dust of stout old Lord Alexander, whose body was brought home from the bloody field of Flodden;--and yet this absurd agriculturist has the coolness to propose to the company that they shall make a deviation of nearly half-a-mile, for the sake of avoiding this remnant of the darker ages! Three times, Bogle, has that man come up to London, at a most enormous expense, for the purpose of defending his property. The first time he was successful in his opposition before the committee of the House of Commons, because the chairman happened to be a person imbued with the same ridiculous prejudices as the proprietor, and was what these foolish Protectionists call a man of birth and connexion. He had on his own grounds a mausoleum with some rubbishy remains of his ancestors, who had been out with Harry Hotspur; and the moment he heard of the old tomb-stone and the yew-trees, he began to rave about desecration, and made such a row that the projectors were fain to give it up. That job cost the Protectionist proprietor at least a cool thousand; however, he was pleased to say, that he did not mind the expense, since he had succeeded in saving the mansion of his fathers. But we did not by any means intend to let him off so easily. My friend Switches, the engineer, laid out two new branches--if possible more annoying than the first, for they were to intersect one another at the yew-trees. We tipped the parliamentary notices; and, though the venerable Cincinnatus came with tears in his eyes to our directors, and offered them the land for nothing if they would only consent to a very slight and practicable deviation, we determined to make him pay for his whistle. Accordingly, next year we had him up again, all right and tight, before a fresh committee. Lord! what fun it was to hear him cross-examined by Sergeant Squashers! That’s the counsel for my money!--no feeling, or delicacy, or nonsense of that kind about him. I wish you had seen the rage of the proprietor when he was asked about his buried ancestor; whether his name was Sawney, or Sandy--and whether he was embalmed with sulphur! We all roared with laughter. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir!” said the Sergeant,--for the red spot began to glow upon the old man’s cheek, and I believe that at that moment, if he had a weapon, he could have driven it hilt-deep into the body of the facetious barrister. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir! thank Heaven, we are in a civilised country, where people wear breeches, and live under the protection of the law. Answer me, sir--and try to do it in something like intelligible English--was that fellow, Lord Saunders or Sawney, or whatever you call him, pickled up in brimstone or in pitch?” Squaretoes could not stand this; so he gathered himself up, I must say rather grandly--muttered something about scorn, and Squashers being a disgrace to the gown he wore, and marched out of the committee room amidst the guffaws of a group of us who were brought up to testify that the house was falling to pieces, and that no Christian, of ordinary intellect, would trust his carcass beneath its roof.

That time we had a capital chairman--a regular man of calico, who never professed to have a grandfather, hated the agriculturists like the pestilence, and had made a large fortune by the railways. He was perfectly delighted at the way in which our friend the Sergeant had put down Sir Pertinax M’Sycophant--a nickname suggested by our solicitor, and employed in the learned counsel’s reply with very considerable effect; and as there were two other members of the League on the committee, we had it all our own way. The preamble was declared to be proven, and no clauses of compensation were allowed. But, if we were obstinate in our purpose, so was Pertinax. He fought us in the House of Lords, and there, to be sure, he got what he termed justice--that is, our bill was thrown out, and some rather harsh expressions used with respect to the company’s behaviour. We were ten days before each committee--for Squashers is rather fond of spinning out a case, and none of us who are paid for attendance by the day, are in the habit of objecting to the same--so that Pertinax must have been out of pocket at least two thousand pounds by this second silly opposition. And considering that the fortunes of the family are not so flourishing as they once were, and that the old fellow can barely afford to give his son a university education, you will admit that this must have been a tolerable pull at his purse-strings. However we were determined to keep it up. The wisdom of the legislature in refusing, under any circumstances whatever, to give costs against the railways, has put it in the power of a company to drive any individual, by unremitting perseverance, to the wall. We set Switches to work again, and this time we propose to metamorphose the mansion into a station-house. I don’t know how the thing will go. Old Pertinax is fighting like a Trojan; and I rather fear that he made a little impression on the committee yesterday, by telling them that he has been obliged to borrow money upon his estate at a ruinous rate of interest, and to endanger the portions of his three pretty and motherless daughters solely to defend his patrimony from the wanton aggressions of the company. But--as Sergeant Squashers well observed, when he saw a tear stealing down the furrowed cheek of the Protectionist--this is not the age nor the place for such imbecile snivelling. We have been taught a new lesson with regard to the sacredness of rights and of property; and the sooner those antiquated hereditary notions are kicked out of the minds of the landowners, the better.

When I said, in the commencement of this letter, that I was swearing before the committees, I made use of a wrong term. We are not sworn--not even examined on soul, or on conscience, or on honour; and I must say that the recollection of that circumstance is sometimes a great comfort when I lie in bed awake of nights. What is technically termed at Westminster, engineering evidence, would, I am afraid, were an oath to be interposed, become very like the thing called perjury; which, not to mention its effect on a future state of existence, is popularly supposed in Scotland to bring one under the unpleasant but especial attention of the High Court of Justiciary. The beauty of the present system is, that it gives ample scope and rein to the imagination without imposing any restrictive fetters upon the conscience. It allows a fair latitude for that difference of opinion which always must prevail amongst professional gentlemen, and relieves them from whatever qualms they might otherwise have left in replying without any hesitation--the leading quality of a witness--to questions upon subjects of which they are utterly and entirely ignorant. I have found this advantage in my own case. I am positive that I could not, had I been on oath, have given any satisfactory evidence as to the amount of the bathing traffic on the line; though I certainly admit that I have sometimes of a Saturday afternoon sauntered along the shore with a cigar, to enjoy the _posés plastiques_ of our northern aquatic Nereids. But as all such formality was dispensed with, I had no hesitation in stating the numbers of the amphibious animals, male and female, at eight hundred per hour during seven months of the year; which, on an average of nine hours a day, and at the rate of sixpence a head, would increase the income of the company by about £37,800 per annum. Such was one item of my evidence yesterday, for the clearness and accuracy of which I was politely complimented by the chairman. I must say, however, that I think Switches went rather too far when he valued poor Pertinax’s garden land at less than half-a-crown per acre. I can make every allowance for enthusiasm; but surely, surely this was pushing the principle a little to the extreme. One ought always to preserve, even for the sake of our employers and paymasters, some little semblance of probability. I do not object to an engineer stating in evidence that he is ready to tunnel Ben Nevis, throw a suspension bridge, over the Queensferry, or convert Lochlomond into a green and fertile meadow. All these--as Switches once observed with consummate coolness when badgered about the draining of a quicksand--are mere matters of estimate; but I like facts when we can have them; and had I been questioned on the subject, I think I should have been inclined to have allowed an additional shilling for the land.

Between ourselves, Bogle, I begin to suspect that this kind of work is not altogether conducive to the growth of a healthy state of morality amongst us, I would not say it in the hearing of our chairman; but I really do suspect that we have stretched a point or two exorbitantly far in our attempts to bolster up the bill. I know a lad who was brought up here, two years ago, to speak to the amount of minerals in a district which at present shall be nameless. He was then a good green creature, fresh from the superintendence of his mother, who--poor old body--had done her best to train him up in the ways of truth, and to instil into his mind a sound moral and religious principle. And she had so far succeeded. I do not believe that, at that time, he would have told a lie or injured a human being for the world; but evil was the day on which lie was brought up to London in order to testify before a committee. He was delivered into the hands of a big-boned Aberdonian engineer, notorious for his pawkiness and the adroit manner in which he always contrived to evade a direct answer to any hostile question whatever. The training proceeded, and in less than a month the youth was pronounced to be tolerably perfect in his paces. But he broke down upon cross-examination. He could not point out upon the map the locality of certain coal-fields which he had averred to be in existence; and a rigid heckling elicited the fact that a seam of black-band, valued at some annual thousands, was neither more nor less than a dyke of ordinary whinstone. It was clear that Jock was not yet entirely qualified for his vocation. He stammered too much--got red in the face when closely pressed, and was apt to potter with the compasses, instead of boldly measuring out his quota of imaginary furlongs. So he was remitted to his studies, and underwent another fortnight’s purification at the Coalhole and the Cyder cellars. A natural propensity for drink which lurked in his constitution, was carefully fostered, until his thirst became absolutely unappeasable. He, was drunk from morning to night, or more strictly speaking, from night till morning. His face broke out in blotches; a dark rim gathered beneath his eyes; his nose gave token of the coming pimple, and his lips were baked and bulging. A more disgusting object you never saw; and I only hope that when he was sent down after the session to Scotland, he had the common humanity not to visit the mother that bore him, for the spectacle would have broken her heart. Jock, however, had now risen in value, for he was ready to testify to any thing. To swear that black is white was nothing: he had no hesitation to depone in favour of the whole colours of the rainbow. When questioned for his employers, he was as acute and active as an eel; when under cross, he took refuge either in a stolid dulness of apprehension, which was extremely aggravating to his inquisitor, or had recourse to the safe and convenient operation of the _non mi recordo_ system. In short, he was voted the prince of surveyor’s assistants, and his services were eagerly sought before every species of committee. Roads, canals, harbours, waterworks, or railways--nothing came amiss to Jock. Through habit he had become a quick study, and could satisfactorily master the details of the most intricate case in the course of a single evening, provided he was liberally, but not too exorbitantly, supplied with liquor. He is now a blackguard of the first water. I firmly believe that he has not spoken one word of truth for the last eighteen months, nor could he do so by any possibility even were you to pay him for it.

Such is the career of a true child of the railway committee system; nor can it well be otherwise, so long as witnesses are allowed to depone without reference to oath, and without the pains of perjury before their eyes. Don’t think me, my dear Bogle, unnecessarily strict in my censures. I make no pretence of having a conscience much less elastic than those of my fellow mortals; but I have a kind of indistinct feeling that it would be better for all of us if, somehow or another, we could be brought to speak the truth, or at least to make some sort of approximation towards it. The very first question which used to be asked of a witness in a court of law, was the remarkably suggestive one,--“Has any body paid you any thing, or promised you any thing, for giving your testimony?” And even yet, when a bribe can be established, it is held to disqualify, or at least to cast discredit upon a witness. Now, although I do not like to confess that we are bribed in the strictest acceptation of the term, we have, all of us, more or less interest in the success of the companies who are judicious enough to secure our services. The leading engineer has the prospect of a large and profitable job. The contractor expects a slice; the surveyor constant employment; and the capability-man and the calculator of traffic know very well that a break-down in evidence will effectually debar them from a future visit to London on the occasion of the next extension, which exclusion is equivalent to a loss of five guineas a-day with all expenses paid. So that, on the whole, I think it is abundantly clear, that we are not altogether patriots of the highest and most exalted breed. Why, then, should we be exempted from that species of purification to which even the peerage of the realm are subjected in a court of law? Of this I am certain, that larger interests are arbitrarily disposed of every session by committees of the House of Commons, than are painfully and laboriously adjudicated on, with all the formalities of law, by the judges of the Court of Session. And if the safeguard of an oath is deemed indispensable in the one case, I cannot for the life of me understand on what principle it should entirely be omitted in the other.

But perhaps you think that a good deal may safely be left to the discretion, discrimination, and prudence of those honourable members who are virtually the judges between the merits of the invading company and the rights of the invaded proprietor. You think that exaggerated or perverted testimony would be of no avail before a tribunal of such exalted intelligence; and that it would be as impossible to get up a fictitious case of traffic, as it would be to persuade a Birmingham trader that a metallic basis to the currency is the foundation of our national prosperity. Bless you, my dear friend! you know nothing at all about the matter. You have not the smallest idea of the extent of swallow of the Sassenach. In nine cases out of ten, they are as ignorant of the points at issue, as that unclean Whig Mr Gisborne is of the nation which he had the impudent audacity to revile. I shall put the case to you in a clear and intelligible point of view. Suppose that a company were proposing to run a line from Rutherglen across the Clyde, the Green of Glasgow, and, through the very heart of the city to the terminus near George Square. You will not deny that there are tolerably weighty interests involved in such a project as that, and I presume you would like to have the whole matter thoroughly expounded, before a locomotive train was permitted to shoot over a skew-bridge in the middle of the Trongate. Now, apart from evidence, who do you think would be the best judges of the expediency of such a measure? Are you not of opinion that the interests of Glasgow would be safer in the hands of the members for the West of Scotland, who have all some local knowledge of the place, than if intrusted to the tender mercies of five gentlemen, not one of whom has ever crossed the Border, and who, during, the whole period of their sitting, are impressed with a strong idea that Rutherglen is the same place as Rugby? Would you consider yourself, and our mutual friends Walter Sheddon, Steenie Provan, Tammy Gilkison, and Ephraim Cansh, a proper or a competent committee to try the merits of a line which was to intersect the heart of Bristol? Not one of you ever set foot in that respectable metropolis of spar; and it baffles my imagination to conceive how your aggregate wisdom could manage to detect and discriminate the truth amidst the conflicting evidence of a cloud of witnesses. Is it not a mere matter of toss-up, whether your decision would be right or wrong? Would you not be apt to abide by the testimony of the most plausible and practised witness, simply because you have no means of testing the accuracy of his deposition? But if the Rutherglen Junction were referred to the decision of you five, I warrant me we should have the business conducted in a very different kind of manner. I think I see Gilkison’s expression of face, at hearing a herring-curer brought up to speak to the value of the salmon fisheries at the Green; or the mute ire of Cansh at being told that the Trongate is a mere lane, and the buildings of no earthly value! I think I hear the obstreperous roar of Provan, consequent on the testimony of an intoxicated brass-founder, that the substratum of the Green is black band! Would not the oleaginous cheeks of Sheddon glisten with indignant dew, if he heard the Clyde described as a positive nuisance to the community?--and would not you, O Bogle, annihilate with a terrific frown, the ruffian who should aver that the finest square in Glasgow is evidently intended by nature for the purposes of a railway station? My life upon it, that you five would soon bring the witnesses to their senses. But, as the business is conducted at present, neither the judges--that is, the members of the committee--nor the counsel who are examining, know any thing at all about the localities. There is a complete monopoly in the business. Members of the English bar, who are necessarily strangers to the site of the proposed operations, are invariably employed by the solicitors in preference to our own advocates who were born and bred upon the spot. Friend Squashers, for example, was never in his life twenty miles north of the Old Bailey, and yet he is considered the fittest person to expatiate to the committee on the advantages of a Highland line. And I will say this for him, that he makes his mountains remarkably like Shooter’s Hill; and in point of bullying a witness, and insulting a landed proprietor, none of our native lads are fit to hold the candle to him.

The question, therefore, which I once put to you before, and which I certainly would put to that plucky little fellow Lord John Russell, if I happened to have the honour of his acquaintance, is simply this--Would it not be better that the evidence which is now taken before committees of the House of Commons on railway and other bills should be given in Scotland, Ireland, and the provinces, before a paid commission and on oath? Certain I am that the work would be far better done. Results would be more accurately brought out, the truth would be better sifted, and there would be an end to that profligate system of demoralisation which is doing no good to London, and is rapidly corrupting such of us as are necessarily drawn within its influence. Honourable members would be relieved from a harassing, tedious, and laborious duty; and their legislative functions need not be interfered with, as the printed evidence would fall to be leisurely and thoroughly sifted. At present a member of the House of Commons is far less a legislator than a mere railway machine. He has not time to study the merits of the vast public questions which ought above every thing to claim his attention; for his whole day is occupied with a dreary detail of curves, gradients, and sections; and by being compelled to do too much, he is crippled in the exercise and discharge of by far his most important functions. And further, the railway interest is already too widely spread in the House of Commons. Almost every member has an interest, direct or indirect, in some particular line or company; and it is impossible to expect that in every case there shall not be a particular sway or bias in the minds of some of the judges. This is not right nor decent. The leading quality which is required of a judge in every department is a strict and thorough impartiality, and an absolute renunciation of every interested motive;--and no sacrifice on the part of the public can be too great to attain so desirable an end. It would be well for us if, during the last and the preceding year, country members had been more occupied with watching the attitude and the proceedings of the ministry, and less with the conflicting statements of rival companies and engineers. Had they been attending to the Currency and the Corn Laws, we ought to have escaped from a commercial crisis, in which even the railway shareholder, as I imagine, has been tolerably severely pinched.

And really, Bogle, I do not think that we are compensated in the sight of Heaven, by our five guineas a-day, for the enormous immoralities which we contract in this overgrown and seductive city. There are some thousands of us here, all living like plethoric gamecocks; and, so far as I can gather, going, in plain language, as fast as possible to the devil. I wish you saw the scramble which takes place in the lobby of the committee-rooms at twelve. A perfect torrent of engineers, surveyors, solicitors, agents, and witnesses--in the middle of which, every here and there, appears the cauliflower head of a counsel--pours up the stairs. The refreshment table below is blocked up with thirsty demons, all clamorous for soda-water, their matutinal tea having failed to quench the old hereditary drought. You wrestle your way into the committee-room, and before the members meet, you become the edified auditor of such scraps of information as the following:--

“Whaur d’ye think Jimsey and me gaed tae last nicht after ‘The Judge and Jury?’”

“I’m sure I dinna ken: some deil’s buckie’s errand, I’se be bound.”

“Gosh, man! we gaed tae the Puckadully Saloon; and Jimsey there took twa turns wi’ an opera dancer at the Polka. Eh, man! she was a grand yin.”

“Was ye no feared, Jimsey?”

“Me feared? Deil a bit. She telt me I was unco like Count Dorsy.”

“And whaur did ye gang after?”

“I dinna mind: I was awfu’ fou.”

“Weel, I wasna muckle better mysel’. Me and Wattie Strowan gaed down to Greenitch, and we forgathered wi’ twa Paisley lads in the steamboat. But there’s Wattie. How d’ye find yoursel’ this morning, Wattie?”

“No richt ava. I woke at eleven with my boots on, and somebody has helped theirsel’ to my watch.”

“Man, that’s fearsome.”

“I dinna care muckle aboot it. It was an auld pinchbeck ane o’ my auntie’s.”

“What’s become o’ Geordie MacAuslan?”

“That’s mair nor ony body kens. Geordie hasna been seen thae twa days. He’s an awfa’ body when he gets upon the batter. He drinks waur nor a trout.”

“Hae ye been to hear Jeanie Lind yet?”

“No me. I dinna care for thae skirling foreigners, and it’s ower dear.”

“Ye should gang though. What’s keeping the committee?”

“The chairman o’t will hae been fon tae. Hech me, I’ve got a sair heid! Jimsey, quae down to the lobby, and we’ll hae a glass of soddy, wi’ a wee thing o’ brandy intil it.”

And so exeunt for a quarter of an hour my fine and faithful compatriots.