Hadrian the Seventh

ye talk about his artfulness! Aye and proud too! He was the most haughty don’t care sort of chap ye can think. I mind his eyes were like lowin’ coals somewhens. You shouldn’t nail him anyhow. Insolence I call it; and I’d have pulled his nose for him many times only he wasn’t worth it. Starving I’ve known him: yet if you’ll believe me he’d give himsel’ a wash and a brush up and go out of an afternoon looking as smart as you please in his old clothes and with a fag always in his mouth like the masher he is. That fag! I’ll let ye know it was aye the same fag. He hadna used to light it ever. He lit it once and put it out directly after; and then he used to stick it in his face every afternoon and show himself as usual, so that no one should know he hadna had a bit fhite fish, na naething to ca’ a moothfu’ o’ flesher’s meat wi’ his piece the week past. He felled it me himsel’ when I got to know him. And now, comrades, there’s that feller sitting on the seven hills of Rome with three gold crowns on his head, as has been put in the papers, damning us for all he’s worth. Comrades, fhat I wish to call the attention of this meeting to this evening is⁠—I’ll just speir if ye think that Rose should like to have his past life gave away by me and my lady-friend? Mrs. Crowe, her name is.”

Jerry paused for a reply; and realized that he had possession of the meeting’s ear: He mopped the lumps on his forehead: helped himself out of the chairman’s whiskey-bottle: gulped a dram; and continued. His assumption of the rhetorical manner was consciously enormous now. “Comrades, as in the east when the golden light of dawn shows that sunrise is about to come, so this poor feeble voice of mine shows that the tyrant’s thrones are tottering to their overthrow. But, comrades, we maun beware. Snares beset our path. Once we have let oursel’s be caught by his infernal Jesuitical machinations and he has scornfully crrrushed us to the earth. This is how Labor is treated, and thus shall Labor be treated as long as we go cap in hand and ask for our rights instead of demanding them and taking them as Comrade Matchwood says in the Salpinx. Comrades, this time we maun conquer or expire. If we want the former, we must fight our enemy with his own tools. Fhat are his tools? Comrades, his tools are Jesuitical Tory tools. His emissaries are everywhere, his spies beset our path on every hand I should say infest our road. Even in this hall tonight, a Tory eye may be upon us, a Jesuitical ear may be protruded to catch these whispers falling from this feeble tongue and pass them on to that arch-pariah in Rome who is drunk with the blood of workingmen and battened on unearned increment. Comrades, we maun take a leaf out of his book: we maun hoist him up on his own Jesuitical petard. We oursels maun become Jesuitical for the sake of the Cause. Comrades, there in Rome sits the Abominable Desolation and I’ll let ye know ye’ll find him fhat ye may call a fikey customer. Day by day his satellites prostrate their forms before his so-called holy toe, and let him know a’ things which they’ve found out by base and underhand sneaking means. That is whit way he is so powerful. His slaves tell him so much that he knows everything. Look fhat with an entire lack of consistency he said about the Salpinx. Could he have said that if he hadna been informed? No, I repeat, a thousand times no. Comrades we maun do the same. He knows our secrets and uses them against us most unfair. We maun worm his out too, and use them to bend his proud knee to the people’s will. Comrades, I, me, know his secrets. I am the man and Mrs. Crowe is the woman fhat shall shame him before all his silken harems and cardinals and potentates⁠—upset his applecart if I may use a colloquious impression. We only have got to show the despot our two faces, and I’ll let ye know he’ll quail as sure’s death. We shan’t need say a word. At the mere sight of me and my lady-friend the monster’ll howl for mercy. Then we will be able to have our revenge for his recent most insulting remarks. We will dictate fhat he shall have to do to win our favour. All the starch and haughtiness shall go out of him like steam out of a toddy-jug when he sees us two; and he shall pay any price to gain our smile. And then I’ll let you know what my plans are. Comrades, we’re agreed aren’t we that the only way in which the Cause can triumph over Capital is by having a Labor majority in the House of Commons. Fhat I mean by that is this. At that magnificent demonstration of Labor’s irresistible electoral might, in the words of the Salpinx, we can make the Tories and our friends the Liberals pass our bills to pay us our proper salaries; and we will wrestle from the reluctant rich the mines and the railways and the mills and all the paying industries, and we shall even nationalize the land itself which our bloated aristocracy have robbed us of and mafficked in and wallowed in our gore. Comrades, I shall not detain you much longer for I see the hour is getting on. Fhat I mean to say is this is the point. There are, in this Great Britain and Ireland of ours the night, no less than 8,452,637 deluded papists with parliamentary votes. I obtained those figures carefully from statistics. You have to be careful about details