LEONARD.—“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Hazeldean. In what respect?”
SQUIRE.—“Why, he was a village genius, and always reading some cursed little tract or other; and got mighty discontented with King, Lords, and Commons, I suppose, and went about talking of the wrongs of the poor, and the crimes of the rich, till, by Jove, sir, the whole mob rose one day with pitchforks and sickles, and smash went Farmer Smart’s thrashing-machines; and on the same night my ricks were on fire. We caught the rogues, and they were all tried; but the poor deluded labourers were let off with a short imprisonment. The village genius, thank Heaven, is sent packing to Botany Bay.”
LEONARD.—“But did his books teach him to burn ricks and smash machines?”
PARSON.—“No; he said quite the contrary, and declared that he had no hand in those misdoings.”
SQUIRE.—“But he was proved to have excited, with his wild talk, the boobies who had! ‘Gad, sir, there was a hypocritical Quaker once, who said to his enemy, ‘I can’t shed thy blood, friend, but I will hold thy head under water till thou art drowned.’ And so there is a set of demagogical fellows, who keep calling out, ‘Farmer, this is an oppressor, and Squire, that is a vampire! But no violence! Don’t smash their machines, don’t burn their ricks! Moral force, and a curse on all tyrants!’ Well, and if poor Hodge thinks moral force is all my eye, and that the recommendation is to be read backwards, in the devil’s way of reading the Lord’s prayer, I should like to know which of the two ought to go to Botany Bay,—Hodge, who comes out like a man, if he thinks he is wronged, or t’ other sneaking chap, who makes use of his knowledge to keep himself out of the scrape?”
PARSON.—“It may be very true; but when I saw that poor fellow at the bar, with his intelligent face, and heard his bold clear defence, and thought of all his hard struggles for knowledge, and how they had ended, because he forgot that knowledge is like fire, and must not be thrown amongst flax,—why, I could have given my right hand to save him. And, oh, Squire, do you remember his poor mother’s shriek of despair when he was sentenced to transportation for life—I hear it now! And what, Leonard—what do you think had misled him? At the bottom of all the mischief was a tinker’s bag. You cannot forget Sprott?”
LEONARD.—“Tinker’s bag! Sprott!”
SQUIRE.—“That rascal, sir, was the hardest follow to nab you could possibly conceive; as full of quips and quirks as an Old Bailey lawyer. But we managed to bring it home to him. Lord! his bag was choke-full of tracts against every man who had a good coat on his back; and as if that was not enough, cheek by jowl with the tracts were lucifers, contrived on a new principle, for teaching my ricks the theory of spontaneous combustion. The labourers bought the lucifers—”
PARSON.—“And the poor village genius bought the tracts.”
SQUIRE.—“All headed with a motto, ‘To teach the working classes that knowledge is power.’ So that I was right in saying that knowledge had burnt my ricks; knowledge inflamed the village genius, the village genius inflamed fellows more ignorant than himself, and they inflamed my stackyard. However, lucifers, tracts, village genius, and Sprott are all off to Botany Bay; and the shire has gone on much the better for it. So no more of your knowledge for me, begging your pardon, Mr. Fairfield. Such uncommonly fine ricks as mine were too! I declare, Parson, you are looking as if you felt pity for Sprott; and I saw you, indeed, whispering to him as he was taken out of court.”