an honest man, and a clever man,
and if he had taken his _own_ way more, and given Powlet Thompson _his_
less, he would a' been a great colony secretary; and more's the pity
he is in such company. He'll get off his beam ends, and right
himself though, yet, I guess.) Well, he'd say--'I was sincere, I was
disinterested; but I am disappointed. I have awakened a pack of hungry
villains who have sharp teeth, long claws, and the appetite of the
devil. They have swallered all I gave 'em, and now would eat me up
without salt, if they could. Oh, that I could hark back! _there is no
satisfyin' a movement party_.'

"Now what do the men say, (I don't mean men of rank, but the men in
the ranks),--'Where's all the fine things we were promised when Reform
gained the day?' sais they, 'ay, where are they? for we are wuss off
than ever, now, havin' lost all our old friends, and got bilked by our
new ones tarnationly. What did all their fine speeches end in at last?
Bunkum; damn the thing but Bunkum.

"But that aint the wust of it, nother. Bunkum, like lyin', is plaguy apt
to make a man believe his own bams at last. From telling 'em so often,
he forgets whether he grow'd 'em or dreamt 'em, and so he stands'
right up on end, kisses the book, and swears to 'em, as positive as the
Irishman did to the gun, which he said he know'd ever since it was a
pistol. Now, _that's Bunkum_.

"But to get back to what we was a talkin' of, did you ever hear such bad
speakin' in your life, now tell me candid? because if you have, I never
did, that's all. Both sides was bad, it aint easy to say which is wus,
six of one and half a dozen of t'other, nothin to brag of nary way. That
government man, that spoke in their favour, warn't his speech rich?

"Lord love you! I aint no speaker, I never made but one speech since I
was raised, and that was afore a Slickville legislatur, and then I broke
down. I know'd who I was a talkin' afore; they was men that had cut
their eye-teeth, and that you could'nt pull the wool over their eyes,
nohow you could fix it, and I was young then. Now I'm growed up, I
guess, and I've got my narves in the right place, and as taught as a
drum; and I _could_ speak if I was in the House o' Commons, that's a
fact. If a man was to try there, that was worth any thin', he'd find he
was a flute without knowin' it. They don't onderstand nothin' but Latin
and Greek, and I'd buoy out them sand banks, keep the lead agoin', stick
to the channel, a