"Their example is to sleep in their coffins. My good sir, if you will not trust your English doctrine to its own truth, you might at least rely on the persuasiveness of its comforts. Nay, pardon me, my friend," he went on, as the Vicar's either cheekbone showed a red flush, "I did not mean to speak offensively; but, Englishman though I am, in matters of religion my countrymen are ever a puzzle to me. At a great price you won your freedom from the Bishop of Rome and his dictation. I admire the price and I love liberty; yet liberty has its drawbacks, as you have for a long while been discovering; of which the first is that every man with a maggot in his head can claim a like liberty with yourselves, quoting your own words in support of it. Let me remind you of that passage in which Rabelais—borrowing, I believe, from Lucian—brings the good Pantagruel and his fellow-voyagers to a port which he calls the Port of Lanterns. 'There (says he) upon a tall tower Pantagruel recognized the Lantern of La Rochelle, which gave us an excellent clear light. Also we saw the Lanterns of Pharos, of Nauplia, and of the Acropolis of Athens, sacred to Pallas,' and so on; whence I draw the moral that coast-lights are good, yet, multiplied, they complicate navigation."
"And apply your moral by erecting yet another!"
"Fairly retorted. Yet how can you object without turning the sword of Liberty against herself? Have you never heard tell, by the way, of Captain Byng's midshipman?"
"Who was he?"
"I forget his name, but he started his first night aboard ship by kneeling down and saying his prayers, as his mother had taught him."
"I commend the boy," said my uncle.
"I also commend him: but the crowd of his fellow-midshipmen found it against the custom of the service and gave him the strap for it. This, however, raised him up a champion in one of the taller lads, who protested that their conduct was tyrannous: 'and,' said he, very generously, 'to-morrow night I too propose to say my prayers. If any one object, he may fight me." Thus, being a handy lad with his fists, he established the right of religious liberty on board. By-and-by one or two of the better disposed midshipmen followed his example: by degrees the custom spread along the lower deck, where the dispute had happened in full view of the whole ship's company, seamen and marines; and by the time she reached her port of Halifax she hadn't a man on board (outside the ward-room) but said his prayers regularly."
"A notable Christian triumph," was the Vicar's comment.
"Quite so. At Halifax," pursued my father, "Captain Byng took aboard out of hospital another small midshipman, who on his first night no sooner climbed into his hammock than the entire mess bundled him out of it. 'We would have you to know, young man,' said they, 'that private devotion is the rule on board our ship. It's down on your knees this minute or you get the strap.'
"I leave you," my father concluded, "to draw the moral. For my part the tale teaches me that in any struggle for freedom the real danger begins with the moment of victory."