The hard-handed
ingrates,--let them go! We propose that, during the prorogation at least,
Members of Parliament, should, like beavers, build their own Houses. In a
word, every member elected to a seat in Parliament should be compelled,
like Robinson Crusoe, to make his own furniture before he could sit down
upon it.
Have we not a hundred examples of the peculiar fitness of the task, in the
habits of what in our human arrogance we call the lower animals? There is
many a respectable spider who would justly feel himself calumniated by any
comparison between him and any one of twenty Parliamentary lawyers we
_could_ name; yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of
refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny
insect, the ant--that living, silent monitor to unregarding men--doth it
not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place?
Does not the mole scratch its own chamber--the carrion kite build its own
nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be lodged at others'
pains?
Consider the wasp, oh, STANLEY! mark its nest of paper.--(it is said, on
wasp's paper you are wont to write your thoughts on Ireland)--and
resolutely seize a trowel!
Look to the bee, oh, COLONEL SIBTHORP! See how it elaborates its virgin
wax, how it shapes its luscious cone--and though we would not trust you to
place a brick upon a brick, nevertheless you may, under instruction, mix
the mortar!
Ponder on the rat and its doings, most wise BURDETT--see how craftily it
makes its hole--and though you are too age-stricken to carry a hod, you
may at least do this much--sift the lime.
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