Written early July 1862.

[“Die Presse” No. 189, July 11, 1862]

London is at the moment occupied with one of those characteristic scandals which are possible only in a country where old aristocratic tradition luxuriates right in the midst of the most modern bourgeois society. The corpus delicti is a Blue Book of the parliamentary committee set up to report on the embankment of the Thames and a road to be constructed along its bank, within the city, connecting Westminster Bridge with Blackfriars Bridge. The very costly project kills several birds with one stone—the embellishment of London, the cleansing of the Thames, the creation of better sanitary conditions, a splendid promenade, and finally a new line of communication that would relieve the Strand, Fleet Street, and the other streets running parallel with the Thames from their daily more dangerous inundation with vehicles, etc., an inundation that almost reminds us of Juvenal’s satire in which the Roman makes his will before he goes out, because he has every probability of being run over or knocked down. On this part of the Thames bank, which is destined for such a metamorphosis—on the north bank, to the east of Westminster Bridge and at the end of Whitehall—are situated the town residences of certain great aristocrats, with their palaces and gardens extending to the Thames. These gentlemen welcome the project, of course, on the whole, because it would embellish the immediate environs of their “mansions” [“Herrensitze”] and would increase their value
at public expense
. They have only one scruple.

The projected construction is to be
interrupted
at the points where it would carry the public road directly along their own estates and thus bring them into contact with the “misera contribuens plebs” [“poor tax-paying populace”]. The

Olympic seclusion of the “fruges consumere nati” is to be disturbed neither by the sight, nor the noise, nor the breath of the vulgar world of business. At the head of these noble Sybarites stands the
Duke of Buccleuch
who, as the richest and most powerful, went furthest in his “modest” demands. And lo, the parliamentary committee reports in the sense of the—Duke of Buccleuch! The new works are to be
interrupted
—where they would
inconvenience
the Duke of Buccleuch. In that committee of the House of Commons sit
Lord Robert Montagu
, a
relative
of the Duke, and
Sir John Shelley
, member for a part of London, for Westminster. He can now already look about for iron armour, as protection against the Armstrong shells of rotten apples and eggs developing sulphuretted hydrogen already announced to him for the next election.

Concerning the committee report itself,
The Times
says:

“This Blue Book is a labyrinth. It consists of 8 lines of report. The remainder is filled with a chaos of mostly worthless, biased statements by witnesses and experts. It is without index, without analysis, without an exposition of the evidence. We wander through an interminable flood of old women’s gossip without coming upon facts that we can examine, or estimates that we might trust. When we think we have finally arrived at a genuine expert testimony, the committee suddenly intervenes and refuses to hear any statement that might be contrary to the wishes of the Duke of Buccleuch. The book is a diffuse and ponderous suppressio veri [suppression of the truth]. It was obviously compiled with the purpose of making any proper debate in Parliament impossible. To this end even the plan drawings have been suppressed and are to be published only post festum—probably
after
the debate.”

In consequence of this scandal, the Londoner has raised two questions. First, who is this
Duke of Buccleuch
, this mighty man whose private whims obstruct the interests of three million people? Who is this giant who, single-handed, challenges all London to a duel? One remembers the name of this man from
no
parliamentary battle. He sits in the House of Lords, but takes as little part in its labours as a eunuch in the pleasures of the seraglio. The answers which he gave before the committee indicate a wholly abnormal deficiency of phosphorus in the brain substance. So who is “that man Buccleuch”? as the London cockney says in his unceremonious manner. Answer: A descendant of the bastards whom the “merry monarch” (the

Merry Monarch) Charles II bestowed upon the world with Lucy
Parsons
, the most shameless and notorious of his mistresses. That is “that man Buccleuch!” The second question which the Londoner raised was: How did this Duke of Buccleuch come into possession of his “mansion” on the Thames? For the Londoner recollects that the ground on which this “mansion” stands is Crown property and was still administered eight years ago by the Royal Ministry of Lands and Woods [Land- und Forstwirtschaft].

The answer to this second question was not long in coming. The press has no hesitation in speaking out plainly in such matters. To characterise not only the matter itself but the manner in which the English press treats such delicate subjects, I quote here
verbatim
from
Reynolds’s Newspaper
of last Saturday:

“The privilege of the Duke of Buccleuch to obstruct the improvements of London is not seven or eight years old. In 1854 the Duke became the lessee of Montague House, Whitehall, by a manoeuvre which would probably have put a poor man in the dock at Old Bailey. But the Duke has an annual income of £300,000 and in addition the merit of being the descendant of Lucy Parsons, the shameless strumpet of the Merry Monarch. Montague House was Crown property, and it was precisely known in 1854 that the site where it stood would be required for public works. Consequently,
Mr Disraeli
, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, refused to sign the lease drawn up for the Duke. Nevertheless, d’une manière ou d’une autre [in one way or another], the lease was signed. Mr Disraeli expressed his indignation at this and denounced his successor
Gladstone
in the House of Commons, accusing him of sacrificing the public interest to the private interest of a duke. Mr Gladstone, in his customary

ironic and unctuous manner, replied that it had been wrong to sign that lease. However, it seemed that there must have been reasons for such a step. A parliamentary inquiry followed, and—what a horror!—the discovery was made that the signatory of the lease was none other than—Mr
Disraeli himself
.

But here comes the aforementioned manoeuvre of the noble descendant of Lucy Parsons, which savours of the criminal gang in Old Bailey! Mr Disraeli declared that he knew absolutely nothing of
his
having signed the lease. He did, however, admit the authenticity of the signature. Nobody doubts Mr Disraeli’s truthfulness. What, then, is the solution of the riddle? The noble descendant of Lucy Parsons made use of a tool or a friend to
smuggle
the lease of Montague House in amongst a mass of documents to be signed as a matter of routine. Thus Mr Disraeli signed it without the slightest knowledge of the content of the document! And thus the descendant of Lucy Parsons obtained the power to set his whims

against the welfare of three million Londoners. The parliamentary committee has made itself the servile tool of his arrogance. If the dwellings of a thousand working men, instead of the surreptitiously obtained mansion of the
one
Buccleuch, had stood in the way, they would have been razed to the ground at once without mercy, and their owners thrown into the street without a penny of compensation.”