“‘If you take the peers, the gentry, the scholars, the men of enterprise and wealth, from our population, what kind of a government should we get from the remainder? Would they be fit to select and elect?’ Then there was another uproar, and Piers sat down, and O’Connell jumped up. He put his witty tongue in his laughing cheek, and, buttoning his coat round him, held up his right hand. And the Reform members cheered, and the Tory members shrugged their shoulders, and waited for what he would say.”
“I don’t want to hear a word from him,” answered Mrs. Atheling. “Come and get your coffee, John. A cup of good coffee costs a deal now, and it’s a shame to let it get cold and sloppy over Dan O’Connell’s blackguarding.”
“Tell us what he said, Father,” urged Kate, who really desired to know more about Piers’s efforts. “You can drink your coffee to his words. I don’t suppose they will poison it.”
“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” said Mrs. Atheling, with a dubious shake of her head; while the Squire lifted his cup, and emptied it at a draught.
“What did he say, Father? Did he attack Piers?”
“To be sure he did. He took the word ‘Remainder,’ and said Piers had called the great, substantial working men of England, Scotland, and Ireland Remainders. He said these ‘Remainders’ might only be farmers, and bakers, and builders, and traders; but they were the backbone of the nation; and the honourable gentleman from Richmoor Palace had called them ‘Remainders.’ And then he gave Piers a few of such stinging, abusive names as he always keeps on hand,–and he keeps a good many kinds of them on hand,–and Piers was like a man that neither heard nor saw him. He looked clean through the member for Kilkenny as if he wasn’t there at all. And then Mr. Scarlett got up, and asked the Speaker if such unparliamentary conduct was to be permitted? And Mr. Dickson called upon the House to protect itself from the browbeating, bullying ruffianism of the member for Kilkenny; and Dan O’Connell sat laughing, with his hat on one side of his head, till Dickson sat down; then he said, he ‘considered Mr. Dickson’s words complimentary;’ and the shouts became louder and louder, and the Speaker had hard work to get things quieted down.”
“Why, John! I never heard tell of such carryings on.”
“Then, Maude, I thought I would say a word or two; and I got the Speaker’s eye, and he said peremptorily, ‘The member for Asketh!’ and I rose in my place and said I thought the honourable member for Kilkenny–”
“John! I wouldn’t have called him ‘honourable.’”
“I know thou wouldst not, Maude. Well, I said honourable, and I went on to say that Mr. O’Connell had mistaken the meaning Lord Exham attached to the word ‘Remainder.’ I said it wasn’t a disrespectful word at all, and that there were plenty of ‘remainders,’ we all of us thought a good deal of; but, I said, I would come to an instance which every man could understand,–the remainder of a glass of fine, old October ale. The rich, creamy, bubbling froth might stand for the landowners; but it was part of the whole; and the remainder was all the better for the froth, and the more froth, and the richer the froth, the better the ale below it. And I went on to say that Lord Exham, and every man of us, knew right well, that the great body of the English nation wasn’t made up of knaves, and scoundrels, and fools, but of good men and women. And then our benches cheered me, up and down, till I felt it was a good thing to be a Representative of the Remainder, and I said so.”