The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-22 00:00:00

POLITICAL CHARACTERS. No. V.

(From the Oxford Herald.)
MR. JOSEPH HUME.
The man's an ass, and hardly worth writing about."

Every body must admit that Sir Walter Scott never penned
a sentence more strikingly truthful than the one here ex-
tracted from his diary ; but though it is an undoubted fact
that Mr. Joseph Hume is " an ass, and not worth writing
about," he has contrived to mix himself up so much with
public matters, that we cannot, in the faithful discharge of
the task we have undertaken, dismiss him without some kind
of notice. Glad, indeed, should we have been if his name
could have been left out altogether from our Gallery of " Po-
litical Characters ;" but as this is impossible, it is well to
get rid of him at once. ,
There are no men who have lived long. and few who have
lived but little, in the world, who are not able to state, from
their own experience, that the great secret of success in life
is impudence. Impudence is a very different quality to what
many old-fashioned persons suppose : it is a good sterling
virtue, not a mean, dirty vice. Its value in all worldly mat-
ters is so great, that parents ought to encourage rather than
check the cultivation of it by their offspring. To those espe-
cially who are destined for public life impudence is of the ut-
most importance ; it is of much greater value than posses-
sions of gold and silver, or even• than hereditary rank. Mo-
desty is a very pretty thing, indeed, no doubt,of that; but
modesty was never intended for these glorious-times of Re-
form and Whiggery and March of Intellect. Nothing, de-
pend upon it, is now-a-days of so much importance to a man
striving to attain any worldly object, hut especially any pub-
lic object, as impudence. Let him go to work in a bold,
dashing, impudent manner, and success will he certain ; but
let him pitch modesty to the dogs, or he will prove himself
an arrant. simpleton. These profound remarks suggested
themselves to us in contemplating the career of certain poli-
tical and other characters, and the striking truth, which it is
their object to teach, will be apparent if our readers will say
what it is that secures the present Ministers place and pelf—
what it is that enables O'Connell to wring some twenty
thousand pounds of " Rint" from his starving countrymen—
and what it is that has made Joe Hume a more important
member of the asinine fraterr'ity, to which Sir :Walter Scott
says he belongs, than others of his long-eared brethren. By
pondering these matters for a few moments, it will be seen
that impudence is a virtue of exceeding worth, for it is impu-
dence alone which has accomplished all.
Confining ourselves for the present to the " Honourable
Member" for Kilkenny, we have to say that it was impu-
dence which first obtained him a seat in parliameut, and it
is impudence alone which hast kept him there. What rank
or wealth or talent has done for other men, impudence has
done for him. Though rank or wealth may enable a man to
get into parliament, it is talent alone that will gain him dis-
tinction when he is there. To be a great man amongst great
men, a peer amongst peers, demands intellectual power of a
varied and lofty order; but without a shadow of pretence
to the possession of talent or ability of any kind, Hume has
contrived to make himself a great man amongst the con-
temptible clique of little men to which he belongs. His
brazen impudence has been to him, indeed, a pearl of preci-
ous' price. It enabled him to meddle with matters which
he was about as capable of understanding as a dustman
would be to teach Greek ; and it enabled him, also, to set at
nought the biting laughs, the withering scorn, the sarcastic
jeers, which his bungling and ludicrous attempts at states-
manship occasioned. His impudence enabled him to go on
from year to year, from day to day, chattering and snarling
about the doings of men who looked uzion him as a crawling
insect beneath contempt. 'That same impudence led him to
set up as the watchful guardian of the public purse, and in
spite of defeat after defeat, to persist in boring the house
with motions and propositions, which it would not agree to,
nor listen to. That impudence led him to suggest the most
extravagant and absurd schemes, which sunk him deeper and
deeper in the estimation of thinking men. Even that impu-
dence, monstrous and brazen as it was, could not have
brought him down to the present day, had it not been en-
couraged by an enormous quantity of self-conceit, and
backed by obstinacy the most dogged that was ever known.
His conceit is such, that he fancies himself capable of
speaking on every subject that comes before parliament;
his impudence is so great that he will thrust his opi-
nion upon the house, though it is never required ; and
his obstinacy is so great and also so extravagant that he
will divide the house twenty times on one of his ridiculous
crotchets. For him no affair is too great, none too minute.
He directs his powerful mind alike to matters affecting
the interests of nations and to matters affecting the inte-
rests of old apple women. He pays equal attention to a pro-
position for a war with China and to a proposition for an im-
proved method of manufacturing birch brooms. He will
support a measure for the reform of corporations, and ano-
ther for the reform of dog carts. lie will move for returns
of the expense of an armament, and of the cost price of tallow
candles used by the parties in the public offices. He will
bring in a bill to protect the river Thames from incendiaries,
and another to limit the consumption of red tape in the dif-
ferent departments of government. He will draw the atten-
tion of the house to proceedings of the Emperor of Russia,
and animadvert on certain improper conduct of Mr. Bill
Smith, a scullion in the royal kitchen. He will infamously
, attack the good King of Hanover, and laud to the skies the
rebel Mackenzie. He will move for a committee to inquire
into the commercial relations of England and the Continental
nations, and another to inquire whether it would be cheaper
to use white or blue foolscap paper. He will put questions
respecting the. dethronement of an Eastern monarch, and re-
gardir", the number of pots of butter consumed in Bucking-
ham Palace. He will speak on every subject that comes be-
fore the legislature, whether he knows anything about it or
not. Measures relating to finance—parliamentary elections
—municipal corporations—prisons—poor laws—corn laws -
-the Established Church—ecclesiastical courts—national
education—police—Church rates—tithe commutation—vote
by ballot—Canada—universal suffrage—socialism—turnpike
roads—vaccination--Newport riots—Prince Albert's annuity
—railways—dissenters—factories—metropolis improvements
—county constabulary—court of chancery—bank of England
—chartism, and five hundred others, in all, all, all, will he
chatter, and splutter, and bluster. Notwithstanding his
clapper is continually going, there is not a worse speaker to
be found ; anything like reasoning never comes from him. He
makes the most monstrous assertions, from which he draws
the most extravagant conclusions. He begins a sentence and
forgets to finish it. He repeats himself over and over again,
and wanders from one point to another continually. What
he does say he says in a manner as if he believed it (as no
doubt he does) and others received it as '• absolute wisdom."
His presumption is so great that he will take upon himself to
advise Sir Robert Peel—to censure Lord Stanley—to attack
the Duke of Wellington—to abuse Lord Lyndhurst—to at-
tempt to be witty at the expense of Sir James Graham,
though the attempt is only a miserable failure. Poor crea-
ture ! he fancies himself a great man, but he is merely a
vain, egregious, and shallow-pated blockhead.
Still he will not pass into the grave "unwept, unhonoured,
unsung," for behold! his name appears in the immortal
pages of Sir Walter Scott. That great and illustrious man
has conferred upon him no mean celebrity. He has ho-
noured him with his notice, and that notice is so flattering,
so true, tbat Mister Joseph Hume may point it out to his fa-
mily, his friends, his country, with honest pride, and when
his early career shall have ended lie may have it engraved on
his monumental tablet, as a most appropriate inscription—an
inscription which, in one brief line, will show posterity the
eminence to which he attained, and the esteem in. which he
was held by the most distinguished of his contemporaries—
" The man's an ass, and not worth wiiting about."