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$Title{Anthology Of Shorter Works
Our Honorable Friend}
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$Author{Dickens, Charles}
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$Subject{friend
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tipkisson
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Title:       Anthology Of Shorter Works
Book:        Our Honorable Friend
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Our Honorable Friend

     We are delighted to find that he has got in!  Our honorable friend is
triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament.  He is the honorable
member for Verbosity - the best represented place in England.

     Our honorable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the
Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a very pretty
piece of composition.  In electing him, he says, they have covered themselves
with glory, and England has been true to herself.  (In his preliminary
address he had remarked, in a poetical quotation of great rarity, that naught
could make us rue, if England to herself did prove but true.)

     Our honorable friend delivers a prediction, in the same document, that
the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up their heads any more; and
that the finger of scorn will point at them in their dejected state, through
countless ages of time.  Further, that the hireling tools that would destroy
the sacred bulwarks of our nationality are unworthy of the name of
Englishmen; and that so long as the sea shall roll around our ocean-girded
isle, so long his motto shall be, No Surrender.  Certain dogged persons of
low principles and no intellect, have disputed whether any body knows who the
minions are, or what the faction is, or which are the hireling tools and
which the sacred bulwarks, or what it is that is never to be surrendered, and
if not, why not?  But, our honorable friend, the member for Verbosity knows
all about it.

     Our honorable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given bushels
of votes.  He is a man of that profundity in the matter of vote-giving, that
you never know what he means.  When he seems to be voting pure white he may
be in reality voting jet black.  When he says Yes, it is just as likely as
not - or rather more so - that he means No.  This is the statesmanship of our
honorable friend.  It is in this that he differs from mere unparliamentary
men.  You may not know what he meant then, or what he means now; but our
honorable friend knows, and did from the first know, both what he meant then,
and what he means now: and when he said he didn't mean it then, he did in
fact say that he means it now.  And if you mean to say that you did not then,
and do not now, know what he did mean then, or does mean now, our honorable
friend will be glad to receive an explicit declaration from you whether you
are prepared to destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.

     Our honorable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this great
attribute, that he always means something, and always means the same thing.
When he came down to that House and mournfully boasted in his place, as an
individual member of the assembled Commons of this great and happy country,
that he could lay his head upon his heart, and solemnly declare that no
consideration on earth should induce him, at any time or under any
circumstances, to go as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed; and when he
nevertheless, next year, did go to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and even beyond it,
to Edinburgh; he had one single meaning, one and indivisible.  And God forbid
(our honorable friend says) that he should waste another argument upon the
man who professes that he cannot understand it!  "I do not, gentlemen," said
our honorable friend, with indignant emphasis and amid great cheering, on one
such public occasion.  "I do not, gentlemen, I am free to confess, envy the
feelings of that man whose mind is so constituted as that he can hold such
language to me, and yet lay his head upon his pillow, claiming to be a native
of that land,

     Whose march is o'er the mountain-wave,
     Whose home is on the deep!

     (Vehement cheering, and man expelled.)

     When our honorable friend issued his preliminary address to the
constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one particular glorious
triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, that even he would be placed
in a situation of difficulty by the following comparatively trifling
conjunction of circumstances.  The dozen noblemen and gentlemen, whom our
honorable friend supported, had "come in," expressly to do a certain thing.
Now, four of the dozen said, at a certain place, that they didn't mean to do
that thing, and had never meant to do it; another four of the dozen said, at
another certain place, that they did mean to do that thing, and had always
meant to do it; two of the remaining four said, at two other places, that
they meant to do half of that thing (but differed about which half), and to
do a variety of nameless wonders instead of the other half; and one of the
remaining two declared that the thing itself was dead and buried, while the
other as strenuously protested that it was alive and kicking.  It was
admitted that the parliamentary genius of our honorable friend would be quite
able to reconcile such small discrepancies as these; but, there remained
the additional difficulty that each of the twelve made entirely different
statements at different places, and that all the twelve called everything
visible and invisible, sacred and profane, to witness, that they were a
perfectly impregnable phalanx of unanimity.  This, it was apprehended, would
be a stumbling-block to our honorable friend.

     The difficulty came before our honorable friend, in this way.  He went
down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent constituents, and to
render an account (as he informed them in the local papers) of the trust they
had confided to his hands - that trust which it was one of the proudest
privileges of an Englishman to possess - that trust which it was the proudest
privilege of an Englishman to hold.  It may be mentioned as a proof of the
great general interest attaching to the contest, that a Lunatic whom nobody
employed or knew, went down to Verbosity with several thousand pounds in
gold, determined to give the whole away - which he actually did; and that all
the publicans opened their houses for nothing.  Likewise, several fighting
men, and a patriotic group of burglars sportively armed with life-preservers,
proceeded (in barouches and very drunk) to the scene of action at their own
expense; these children of nature having conceived a warm attachment to our
honorable friend, and intending, in their artless manner, to testify it by
knocking the voters in the opposite interest on the head.

     Our honorable friend being come into the presence of his constituents,
and having professed with great suavity that he was delighted to see his good
friend Tipkisson there, in his working dress - his good friend Tipkisson
being an inveterate saddler, who always opposes him, and for whom he has a
mortal hatred - made them a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in which he
showed them how the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days
from their coming in) exercised a surprisingly beneficial effect on the
whole financial condition of Europe, had altered the state of the exports and
imports for the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made
all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored
all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had
played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so
much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per
cent!  He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what
were his principles?  His principles were what they always had been.  His
principles were written in the countenances of the lion and unicorn; were
stamped indelibly upon the royal shield which those grand animals supported,
and upon the free words of fire which that shield bore.  His principles were,
Britannia and her sea-king trident!  His principles were, commercial
prosperity co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment;
but short of this he would never stop.  His principles were, these, - with
the addition of his colours nailed to the mast, every man's heart in the
right place, every man's eye open, every man's hand ready, every man's mind
on the alert.  His principles were these, concurrently with a general
revision of something - speaking generally - and a possible readjustment of
something else, not to be mentioned more particularly.  His principles, to
sum up all in a word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and
Sceptre, Elephant and Castle.  And now, if his good friend Tipkisson required
any further explanation from him he (our honourable friend) was there,
willing and ready to give it.

     Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd, with
his arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on our honourable friend:
Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable friend's address had not relaxed a
muscle of his visage, but had stood there, wholly unaffected by the torrent
of eloquence: an object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we mean,
of course, to the supporters of our honourable friend): Tipkisson now said
that he was a plain man (Cries of "You are indeed!"), and that what he wanted
to know was, what our honourable friend and the dozen noblemen and gentlemen
were driving at?

     Our honourable friend immediately replied, "At the illimitable
perspective."

     It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement of our
honourable friend's political views ought, immediately, to have settled
Tipkisson's business and covered him with confusion; but, that implacable
person, regardless of the execrations that were heaped upon him from all
sides (by which we mean, of course, from our honourable friend's side),
persisted in retaining an unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted that
if our honourable friend meant that, he wished to know what that meant?

     It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent opposition,
that our honourable friend displayed his highest qualifications for the
representation of Verbosity.  His warmest supporters present, and those who
were best acquainted with his generalship, supposed that the moment was come
when he would fall back upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.  No such
thing.  He replied thus: "My good friend Tipkisson, gentlemen, wishes to
know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving at, and when I candidly
tell him, at the illimitable perspective.  He wishes (If I understand him)
to know what I mean?" "I do!" says Tipkisson, amid cries of "Shame" and "Down
with him." "Gentlemen," says our honourable friend, "I will indulge my good
friend Tipkisson, by telling him, both what I mean and what I don't mean.
(Cheers and cries of "Give it him!") Be it known to him, then, and to all
whom it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that I
don't mean mosques and Mohammedanism!" The effect of this home-thrust was
terrific.  Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down and hustled out, and
has ever since been regarded as a Turkish Renegade who contemplates an early
pilgrimage to Mecca.  Nor was he the only discomfited man.  The charge, while
it stuck to him, was magically transferred to our honourable friend's
opponent, who was represented in an immense variety of placards as a firm
believer in Mahomet; and the men of Verbosity were asked to choose between
our honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable friend's opponent and
the Koran.  They decided for our honourable friend, and rallied round the
illimitable perspective.

     It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much appearance of
reason, that he was the first to bend sacred matters to electioneering
tactics.  However this may be, the fine precedent was undoubtedly set in a
Verbosity election: and it is certain that our honourable friend (who was a
disciple of Brahma in his youth, and was a Buddhist when he had the honour
of travelling with him a few years ago,) always professes in public more
anxiety than the whole Bench of Bishops, regarding the theological and
doxological opinions of every man, woman, and child, in the United Kingdom.

     As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in again at
this last election, and that we are delighted to find that he has got in, so
we will conclude.  Our honourable friend cannot come in for Verbosity too
often.  It is a good sign; it is a great example.  It is to men like our
honourable friend, and to contests like those from which he comes triumphant,
that we are mainly indebted for that ready interest in politics, that fresh
enthusiasm in the discharge of the duties of citizenship, that ardent desire
to rush to the poll, at present so manifest throughout England.  When the
contest lies (as it sometimes does) between two such men as our honourable
friend, it stimulates the finest emotions of our nature, and awakens the
highest admiration of which our heads and hearts are capable.

     It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will be always
at his post in the ensuing session.  Whatever the question be, or whatever
the form of its discussion; address to the crown, election-petition,
expenditure of the public money, extension of the public suffrage, education,
crime; in the whole house, in committee of the whole house, in select
committee; in every parliamentary discussion of every subject, everywhere:
the Honourable Member for Verbosity will most certainly be found.