“Well, Mother, the lad had his say last night; but, Dal it! Mr. Brougham went at the Government and the Electors as if they were all of them wearing the devil’s livery. I call it scandalous! It was nothing else. He let on to be preaching for Reform, but he was just preaching for Henry Brougham.”
“What was Mr. Brougham talking about, Father?”
“Mr. Brougham can talk about nothing but Reform, Kitty, the right of every man to vote as seems good in his own eyes. He said peers and landowners influenced and prejudiced votes in a way that was outrageous and not to be borne, and a lot more words of the same kind; for Henry Brougham would lose his speech if he had anything pleasant to say. I was going to get up and give him a bit of my mind, when Piers rose; and the cool way in which he fixed his eye-glass, and looked Mr. Brougham up and down, and straight in the face, set us all by the ears. He was every inch of him, then and there, the future Duke of Richmoor; and he told Brougham, in a very sarcastic way, that his opinions were silly, and would neither bear the test of reason nor of candid examination.”
“But, Father, I thought Mr. Brougham was the great man of the Commons, and held in much honour.”
“Well, my little maid, he may be; but I’ll warrant it is only by people who have their own reasons for worshipping the devil.”
“Come, come, John! If I was thee, I would be silent until I could be just.”
“Not thou, Maude! Right or wrong, thou wouldst say thy say. I think I ought to know thee by this time.”
“Never mind me, John. We want to hear what Piers said.”
“Brougham’s words had come rattling off in full gallop. Piers, after looking at him a minute, began in that contemptuous drawl of his,–you’ve heard it I’ve no doubt,–‘Mr. Brougham affords an example of radical opinions degrading a statesman into a politician. He cannot but know that it is the positive, visible duty of every landowner to influence and prejudice votes. It is the business and the function of education and responsibility to enlighten ignorance, and to influence the misguided and the misled. If it is the business and the function of the clergy to influence and prejudice people in favour of a good life; if it is the business and function of a teacher to influence and prejudice scholars in favour of knowledge,–it is just as certainly the business and function of the landowner to influence his tenants in favour of law and order, and to prejudice them against men who would shatter to pieces the noblest political Constitution in the world.’”
The Squire read this period aloud with great emphasis, and added, “Well, Maude, you never heard such a tumult as followed. Cries of ‘Here! Here!’ and ‘Order! Order!’ filled the House; and the Speaker had work enough to make silence. Piers stood quite still, watching Brougham, and as soon as all was quiet, he went on,–