“The trouble lies here,” the squire continued,—“these gatherings of men waiting to see The Bill passed that shall give them their rights, have been well taught by Earl Grey, Lord Russell, and Lord Brougham, but only fitfully, at times and seasons; but by day and night ivery day and Sunday, there hev been and there are chartists and socialist lecturers among them, putting bitter thoughts against their awn country into their hearts. And they’re a soft lot. They believe all they are told, if t’ speaker but claim to be educated. Such precious nonsense!”
“Well, then, father, a good many really educated people go to lectures about what they call science and they, too, believe all that they are told.”
“I’ll warrant them, Dick. Yet our Rector, when he paid us a visit last summer, told me emphatically, that science was a new kind of sin—a new kind of sin, that, and nothing more, or better! And I’ll be bound thy mother will varry soon find it out and I’m glad she hed the sense to keep Kitty away from such teachers. Just look at Brougham. He is making a perfect fool of himsen about tunneling under the Thames River and lighting cities with the gas we see sputtering out of our coal fires and carrying men in comfortable coaches thirty, ay, even forty, miles an hour by steam. Why Bingley told me, that he heard Brougham say he hoped to live to see men heving their homes in Norfolk or Suffolk villages, running up or down to London ivery day to do their business. Did tha iver hear such nonsense, Dick? And when men who publish books and sit on the government benches talk it, what can you expect from men who don’t know their alphabet?”
“You have an easier fight than I have, sir. Love and one woman, can be harder to win, than a thousand men for freedom.”
“Tha knows nothing about it, if that is thy opinion,” and the squire straightened himself, and stood up, and with a great deal of passion recited three fine lines from Byron, the favorite men’s poet of that day:—
“For Freedom’s battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is always won!”
“Those lines sound grandly in your mouth, dad,” said Dick, as he looked with admiring love into his father’s face.
“Ay, I think they do. I hev been reciting them a good deal lately. They allays bring what t’ Methodists call ‘the Amen’ from the audience. I don’t care whether it is made up of rich men, or poor men, they fetch a ringing Amen from every heart.”