The narrator of "Bartleby"

alice wellintown alicewellintown at gmail.com
Sun Dec 25 07:11:35 CST 2011


For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have
contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say
five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.


After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity,
at length comes forth the grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of
all state-physicians, from the days of Draco to the present time.
After feeling the pulse and shaking the head over the patient,
prescribing the usual course of warm water and bleeding—the warm water
of your mawkish police, and the lancets of your military—these
convulsions must terminate in death, the sure consummation of the
prescriptions of all political Sangrados. Setting aside the palpable
injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill, are there not
capital punishments sufficient on your statutes ? Is there not blood
enough upon your penal code ! that more must be poured forth to ascend
to heaven and testify against you ? How will you carry this bill into
effect ? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons ? Will you
erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarescrows ? or
will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into effect) by
decimation; place the country under martial law; depopulate and lay
waste all around you; and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable
gift to the crown in its former condition of a royal chase, and an
asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and
desperate populace ? Will the famished wretch who has braved your
bayonets be appalled by your gibbets ? When death is a relief, and the
only relief it appears that you will afford him, will he be dragooned
into tranquillity ? Will that which could not be effected by your
grenadiers, be accomplished by your executioners ? If you proceed by
the forms of law, where is your evidence ? Those who have refused to
impeach their accomplices when transportation only was the punishment,
will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the
penalty. With all due deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a
little investigation, some previous inquiry, would induce even them to
change their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so
marvellously efficacious in many and recent instances,temporising,
would not be without its advantage in this. When a proposal is made to
emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you
temporize and tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be
passed off hand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am,
from what I have heard and from what I have seen, that to pass the
bill under all the existing circumstances, without inquiry, without
deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and
barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to
inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said
to be written, not in ink, but in blood. But suppose it past,—suppose
one of these men, as I have seen them meagre with famine, sullen with
despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to
value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame ; suppose
this man surrounded by those children for whom he is unable to procure
bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a
family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is
not his fault than he can no longer so support; suppose this man—and
there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your
victims,—dragged into court to be tried for this new offence, by this
new law,—still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn
him, and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a
Jefferies for a judge!"

On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jed Kelestron wrote:
>>
>> No, Michael. I find my posts annoying and trite so I never re-read them.
>
> bummer.  I like your posts.  I reread this one several times.
>
> It's balanced, it's brief, and it's personalized.



More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list