Once upon a time-not in the days when pigs drank
wine, but in a more recent period of our history-it
was customary to banish politics when ladies were
present. If this usage still prevailed, we should
have had no chapter for political young gentlemen,
for ladies would have neither known nor cared what
kind of monster a political young gentleman was.
But as this good custom in common with many others
has ‘gone out,’ and left no word when it
is likely to be home again; as political young ladies
are by no means rare, and political young gentlemen
the very reverse of scarce, we are bound in the strict
discharge of our most responsible duty not to neglect
this natural division of our subject.
If the political young gentleman be resident in a
country town (and there are political young gentlemen
in country towns sometimes), he is wholly absorbed
in his politics; as a pair of purple spectacles communicate
the same uniform tint to all objects near and remote,
so the political glasses, with which the young gentleman
assists his mental vision, give to everything the
hue and tinge of party feeling. The political
young gentleman would as soon think of being struck
with the beauty of a young lady in the opposite interest,
as he would dream of marrying his sister to the opposite
member.
If the political young gentleman be a Conservative,
he has usually some vague ideas about Ireland and
the Pope which he cannot very clearly explain, but
which he knows are the right sort of thing, and not
to be very easily got over by the other side.
He has also some choice sentences regarding church
and state, culled from the banners in use at the last
election, with which he intersperses his conversation
at intervals with surprising effect. But his
great topic is the constitution, upon which he will
declaim, by the hour together, with much heat and
fury; not that he has any particular information on
the subject, but because he knows that the constitution
is somehow church and state, and church and state
somehow the constitution, and that the fellows on the
other side say it isn’t, which is quite a sufficient
reason for him to say it is, and to stick to it.
Perhaps his greatest topic of all, though, is the
people. If a fight takes place in a populous
town, in which many noses are broken, and a few windows,
the young gentleman throws down the newspaper with
a triumphant air, and exclaims, ’Here’s
your precious people!’ If half-a-dozen boys
run across the course at race time, when it ought
to be kept clear, the young gentleman looks indignantly
round, and begs you to observe the conduct of the
people; if the gallery demand a hornpipe between the
play and the afterpiece, the same young gentleman
cries ‘No’ and ‘Shame’ till
he is hoarse, and then inquires with a sneer what
you think of popular moderation now; in short,
the people form a never-failing theme for him; and
