"Dulness, with transport, eyes each lively dunce, Remembering she herself was Pertness once, And tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views. Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own fool's colours gilds them all."
Indeed, all the arrangements of Congress favour the influence of the sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the day--eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to contract with them by the _scrape_. As for instance--To involving the country in a war with Mexico, so much--To ditto with Great Britain, so much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum for a protective tariff, with an understanding, that it was to be repealed the next at a moderate advance. You would thus insure the greatest possible variety of political catastrophes, with the least possible friction and expense. Again, the furniture of the Capitol is altogether too luxurious. Each member is provided with a private desk, stationery _ad lib._, a stuffed arm-chair, and a particular spittoon. No wonder, then, that your Simmses and Chipmans are listened to with complacency. It's all in the day's work--it's considered in the wages. While these worthies hold forth for the benefit of distant Missouri and Michigan, their colleagues write their letters, read the newspapers, chew tobacco, as little boys do toffy in England, and expectorate at leisure. No one cheers, no one groans, no one cries Oh! Oh!--all the noise that is made is on private account, and not at all personal to the gentleman on his legs. Yet, such is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that the Americans are much given to boast of the dignity and decorum of their Legislature, and to thank God that it is not a bear-garden like another place of the kind that they wot of. We must have been asked at least six times a-day during our visit at Washington, "How Congress compared with the British Parliament?" To which we used to reply, "That they did not compare at all," an answer which fully met the truth of the case, without in the least wounding the self-love of the querist.