Westminster Corridors
Monday. February 10 Mv rest was disturbed this night by a curious dream of hallucination, which in other circumstances 1 might have supposed to he of prophetick character. For it seemed that Sir Keith Joseph, a most estimable Statesman who abhorrs the debasement of the Currency above all things, wherefore he has been unjustly traduced as no friend to the poor and hardworking, had been chosen as Leader to the Tories, in no wise assisted by the hacks and scribblers of Grub Street or by his Fellows among the Principal Tories, excepting Mistress Thatcher. At which his criticks all declared that his reputation as a High Tory had been greatly exaggerated, that he regretted the debasement of the Currency but mildly, and that he preferred countless other objects to sound money, as for instance the approval of Master Rees-Mogg. Moreover, his true character — or so these criticks made assertion — would shortly be revealed by his choice of close political colleagues, insofar as he Would in all surety ignore the claims of Mistress Thatcher to an oeconomical task. For that Lady, contrariwise to himself, was in truth a High Tory; she was in consequence a proper object of horror to the trimmers: and her chaste passion for sound money, if foolishly indulged, would inevitably procure the ruin of Nation, division in the Tory Party, and misery among artisans. Alas, before it was revealed to me whether Sir Keith had yielded to these specious arguments, I awoke.
Tuesday, February 1/ My most sanguine expectations have been gratified, and Mistress Thatcher is this day Leader to the Tories. Hastening from the Commons to ponder the consequences of this in a nearby ale-house, 1 chanced to encOunter a 'notorious alchemist, known far and wide for his study of numbers, their power, significance and influence over the lives of mortals. Thinking to detect him in some chicanery, 1 enquired the cause of his presence in Westminster. He had come, he said, to deliver to Master Whitelaw a disturbing yet welcome intelligence, viz: that the number seventy-nine possesses a strange occult force, that to initiates it hath greater value than seemingly higher numbers, as for instance 146.
Wednesday, February 12 1 gather, from hearsay and rumour, that Mistress Thatcher is subject to fierce pressures concerning her notions of Toryism and those she would appoint to quasi-office. Supported by the mystic power of his seventy-nine votes, Master Whitelaw bath declared that, were she to pursue her own vision of the publick good, it must produce disastrous results, such as the loss of elections and the curtailment of Tory support to the Middling classes of Society. To prevent which, she must embrace instead such stratagems as the controul of worknien's wages and the expenditure of printed money which have ever proved popular with the masses. Master Carr too bath warned against the appointing of Sir Keith Joseph to an oeconomical sinecure, his oeconomical opinions being 'simplistic'. Yet how Master Carr might judge whether oeconomical opinions are simplistic, or mercantilist, or mauve, or sabbattarian, or long-legged remains a mystery to all.
Friday, February 14
Advice has this day been vouchsafed to Mistress Thatcher by the Oeconomist — a periodical which bath lately fallen under the sway of young men who plume themselves upon their moderation, which passes as a substitute for thinking in these confused times. Having advised, with no little force of argument, their readers to support the Tory Cause in our two recent Elections, on the proper and reasonable grounds that the Levelling Party had embraced Fanatick Dogmas without reservation, they now assert (ignoring the outcome of both occasions) that electoral success is to be gained only by adherence to Moderate doctrines. Of just such .a logickal quality are the ravings of our poor, deluded madmen in Bedlam, whose certainty that the World must end on each tomorrow is not the slightest disturbed by each day's Sun.
Tom Puzzle'
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