ent member was too lame to get near
it, and the final ancient member was too pig-headed to look at it. How
there were more years; more impertinences, ignorances, and insults. How
my lords then made a Minute, number five thousand one hundred and three,
whereby they resigned the business to the Circumlocution Office. How the
Circumlocution Office, in course of time, took up the business as if
it were a bran new thing of yesterday, which had never been heard of
before; muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the business
in a wet blanket. How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults went
through the multiplication table. How there was a reference of the
invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew nothing about
it; into whose heads nothing could be hammered about it; who got bored
about it, and reported physical impossibilities about it. How the
Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred
and forty, 'saw no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had
arrived.' How the Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my lords
had arrived at no decision, shelved the business. How there had been
a final interview with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very
morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had been, upon the
whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the
various points of view, of opinion that one of two courses was to be
pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to leave it
alone for evermore, or to begin it all over again.

'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in
that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to
me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the
government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office
door by the collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical
man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here
we are!'

If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told
them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function.
That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship
as long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean
the ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off
once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that
was the ship's look out, and not theirs.