“Perhaps you may have joined them. Are you a head-centre, or only empowered to administer oaths and affirmations?”
“Oh! I have it now,” cried Haire, triumphantly. “You remember, one day we were in the shrubbery after breakfast, you remarked that this insurrection was especially characterized by the fact that no man of education, nor, indeed, of any rank above the lowest, had joined it. You said something about the French Revolution, too; and how, in the Reign of Terror, the principles of the Girondists had filtered down, and were to be seen glittering like—”
“Spare me, Haire,—spare me, and do not ask me to recognize the bruised and battered coinage, without effigy or legend, as the medal of my own mint.”
“At all events, you remember what I'm referring to.”
“With all your efforts to efface my handwriting I can detect something of my signature,—go on.”
“Well, they have at last caught a man of some mark and station. I saw Spencer, of the head office, this morning, and he told me that he had just committed to Newgate a man of title and consideration. He would not mention his name; indeed, the investigation was as private as possible, as it was felt that the importance of such a person being involved in the project would give a very dangerous impulse to the movement.”
“They are wrong, sir. The insurrection that is guided by men of condition will, however dangerous, be a game with recognized rules and laws. The rebellion of the ignorant masses will be a chaos to defy calculation. You may discuss measures, but there is no arguing with murder!”
“That's not the way Spencer regarded it. He says the whole thing must be kept dark; and as they have refused to accept his bail, it's clear enough they think the case a very important one.”
“If I was not on the Bench I would defend these men! Ay, sir, defend them! They have not the shadow of a case to show for this rebellion. It is the most causeless attempt to subvert a country that ever was conceived; but there is that amount of stupidity,—of ignorance, not alone of statecraft, but of actual human nature, on the part of those who rule us, that it would have been the triumph of my life to assail and expose them. Why, sir, it was the very plebeian character of this insurrection that should have warned them against their plan of nursing and encouraging it. Had the movement been guided by gentlemen, it might have been politic to have affected ignorance of their intentions till they had committed themselves beyond retreat; but with this rabble—this rebellion in rags—to tamper was to foster. You had no need to dig pitfalls for such people; they never emerged from the depths of their own ignominious condition. You should have suppressed them at once,—stopped them before the rebel press had disseminated a catechism of treason, and instilled the notion through the land that the first duty of patriotism was assassination.”
“And you would have defended these men?”