But there was no reply; and soon after, Mr. Millbank talking of the American market, and Coningsby helping himself to a glass of claret, the daughter of the Saxon, looking at her father, rose and left the room, so suddenly and so quickly that Coningsby could scarcely gain the door.
‘Yes,’ said Millbank, filling his glass, and pursuing some previous observations, ‘all that we want in this country is to be masters of our own industry; but Saxon industry and Norman manners never will agree; and some day, Mr. Coningsby, you will find that out.’
‘But what do you mean by Norman manners?’ inquired Coningsby.
‘Did you ever hear of the Forest of Rossendale?’ said Millbank. ‘If you were staying here, you should visit the district. It is an area of twenty-four square miles. It was disforested in the early part of the sixteenth century, possessing at that time eighty inhabitants. Its rental in James the First’s time was 120l. When the woollen manufacture was introduced into the north, the shuttle competed with the plough in Rossendale, and about forty years ago we sent them the Jenny. The eighty souls are now increased to upwards of eighty thousand, and the rental of the forest, by the last county assessment, amounts to more than 50,000l., 41,000 per cent, on the value in the reign of James I. Now I call that an instance of Saxon industry competing successfully with Norman manners.’
‘Exactly,’ said Coningsby, ‘but those manners are gone.’
‘From Rossendale,’ said Millbank, with a grim smile; ‘but not from England.’
‘Where do you meet them?’
‘Meet them! In every place, at every hour; and feel them, too, in every transaction of life.’
‘I know, sir, from your son,’ said Coningsby, inquiringly, ‘that you are opposed to an aristocracy.’
‘No, I am not. I am for an aristocracy; but a real one, a natural one.’