there were ever springing up fresh difficulties. Secret clubs were formed for murder and reprisal. A body called the “Yellows” had bound themselves by private oaths to keep up the memory of the religious victories of their predecessors, and to worry the clerical party in every possible way. Their pleasure was to go about insanely blowing rams'-horns, carrying flags and bearing oranges in their hands. The islanders hated oranges, and at every opportunity cracked the skulls of the orange-bearers with brutal weapons peculiar to the island. These, in return, cracked native skulls. The whole island was in a state of perpetual commotion. Still, its general condition improved, its farms grew prosperous, and a joint-stock company had built a mill for converting cocoanut fibre into horse-cloths, which yielded large profits. The memory of past events might well have been buried; but the clerics, in the interest of the old woman, fanned the embers, and the infamous bidding for popularity of parties at home served to keep alive passions that would naturally have died out. Besides, latterly folly had been too organized on both sides to suffer oblivion. Everybody was tired of the squabbles of St. Helena. At length there was a general movement in the interests of peace, and to pacify the islanders Parliament was asked to pull down the wings of the old church edifice, remove some of the graves, and cut off a large piece of the graveyard. Some were in favor also of dividing all the farms in the country among the aborigines, but the difficulty was to know how at the same time to satisfy the present occupiers. These schemes were topics of high debate, upon them the fortunes of Government rose and fell, and while they were agitated Ginx's Baby could have no chance of a parliamentary hearing. Many other matters of singular indifference had eaten up the legislative time; but at last the increasing number of wretched infants throughout the country began to alarm the people, and Sir Charles Sterling thought the time had come to move on behalf of Ginx's Baby and his fellows.
While Sir Charles was trying to get the Government to “give him a night” to debate the Ginx's Baby case, and while associations were being formed in the metropolis for disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise, a busy peer without notice to anybody, suddenly brought the subject before the House of Lords. As he had never seen the Baby, and knew nothing or very little about him, I need scarcely report the elaborate speech in which he asked for aristocratic sympathy on his behalf. He proposed to send him to the Antipodes at the expense of the nation.
The Minister for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a clever man—keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant skirmishing; deft, but never deep; much moved too by the opinions of his permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of them—the air of originality, the really original air he threw around them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it as saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind. If that minister lived long he would be forced to adopt and advocate in as pretty a manner the policy he was dissecting. Lord Munnibagge, a great authority in economic matters, said that a weaker case had never been presented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony at imperial expense was at once to rob the pockets of the rich and to decrease our labor-power. There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby could not starve in a country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge) had never heard of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide-spread distress as was represented by the noble lord. There were occasional periods of stagnation in trade, and no doubt in these periods the poorer classes would suffer; but trade was elastic; and even if it were granted that the present was a period when employment had failed, the time was not far off when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all other babies would not then wish to go away. People were always making exaggerated statements about the condition of the poor. He (Lord Munnibagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, though temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing richer every day. (Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby must be growing richer with the rest. Was not that a complete answer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries? (Cheers and laughter.) That the population of a country was a great fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle of political economy. He thought, from the high rates of wages, that there were not too many but too few laborers in the country. He should oppose the motion. (Cheers.)
Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, guarding themselves as carefully from any reference to facts, or to the question whether high rates of wages might not be the concomitants simply of high prices of necessaries, or to the yet wider question whether colonial development might not have something to do with progress at home. The noble lord who had rushed unprepared into the arena was unequal to the forces marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion. Thus the great debate collapsed. The Lords were relieved that an awkward question had so easily been shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's Baby Expatriation question. “So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had established that there was no necessity for the interference of Government in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other babies or persons. The lucid and decisive statement of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire had shown how impossible it was for the Imperial Government to take part in a great scheme of Expatriation; how impolitic to endeavor to affect the ordinary laws of free movement to the Colonies.” Surely after this the Expatriation people hid their lights under a bushel! The Government refused to find a night for Sir Charles Sterling, and after the Lords' debate he did not see his way to force a motion in the Lower House. Meanwhile Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his own fate. Tired of the slow life of the Club, and shivering amid the chill indifference of his patrons, he borrowed without leave some clothes from an inmate's room, with a few silver forks and spoons, and decamped. Whether the baronet and the Club were bashful of public ridicule or glad to be rid of the charge, I know not, but no attempt was made to recover him.
Our hero was nearly fifteen years old when he left the Club to plunge into the world. He was not long in converting his spoils into money, and a very short time in spending it. Then he had to pit his wits against starvation, and some of his throws were desperate. Wherever he went the world seemed terribly full. If he answered an advertisement for an errand-boy, there were a score kicking their heels at the rendezvous before him. Did he try to learn a useful trade, thousands of adepts were not only ready to underbid him, but to knock him on the head for an interloper. Even the thieves, to whom he gravitated, were jealous of his accession, because there were too many competitors already in their department. Through his career of penury, of honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures, imprisonments and other punishments, a year's reading of Metropolitan Police Reports would furnish the exact counterpart.
I don't know how many years after his flight from Pall Mall, one dim midnight, I, returning from Richmond, lounged over Vauxhall Bridge, listening to the low lapping of the current beneath the arches—looking above to the stars and along the dark polished surface that reflected a thousand lights in its undulations,—feeling the awfulness of the dense, suppressed life that was wrapt within the gloom and calm of the hour. I suddenly saw a shadow, a human shadow, that at the sound of my footstep quickly crossed my dreamy vision—quickly, noiselessly came and went before my eyes until it stood up high and outlined against the strangely-mingled haze. It looked like the ghost of a slight-formed man, hatless and coatless, and for a moment I saw at its upper extremity the dull flash as of a human face in the gloom, before the shadow leaped out far into the night. Splash! When my startled eyes looked down upon the glancing, waving ebony, I thought I could trace a white coruscation of foam spreading out into the darkness, instantly to dissipate and be lost for ever. I did not then know what form it was that swilled down below the glistening current. Had I known that it was Ginx's Baby I should perhaps have thought “Society, which, in the sacred names of Law and Charity, forbad the father to throw his child over Vauxhall Bridge, at a time when he was alike unconscious of life and death, has at last itself driven him over the parapet into the greedy waters”——
Philosophers, Philanthropists, Politicians, Papists and Protestants, Poor-Law Ministers and Parish Officers—while you have been theorizing and discussing, debating, wrangling, legislating and administering—Good God! gentlemen, between you all, where has Ginx's Baby gone to?