Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

A collection had been made for him in the town by a number of those who regarded him as a victim and a martyr. This amounted to a sum sufficient to enable him to purchase a little cutter of his own, that happened to be going cheap at a neighbouring seaport town. Saul’s mates having heard of it, went to look at it, and finally negotiated the purchase, which made him the proud possessor of this fast-sailing cutter, which was significantly said to be far faster and more responsive to wind and tide than any of the Customs boats in these parts.

And now a new life began for Saul. He had always done some smuggling along the coast with his friends the fishermen; but now it became a regular trade with him. Fishing was the merest excuse for the more serious occupation of his life; and as his health and strength returned with this free life on the sea, so did his ferocious hatred to all restraints of law and order grow and increase in him. He delighted in his illicit traffic far more because he was a breaker of the law than because it brought him large gains. He began to be a notable man along the coast; appearing now at this place, now at the other; landing his goods with a skill and daring that made him the idol of the fisher-folk all around, and the terror of the custom-house officers, who tried in vain to catch him, and began to think he must bear a charmed life, so absolutely impossible did they find it to get sight of him.

As for the gentry round, there was a very mixed feeling in their minds with regard to the defaulter and his occupation. They had nearly all of them cellars of excellent brandy and wine that had never paid duty, and were by no means desirous of seeing the illicit traffic too rigidly put down. They winked at it, if they did not actually encourage it; and it was well known that half of them would always buy smuggled goods and ask no question, in spite of all that the indignant officers could urge to the contrary.

The country was soon in a state of pleasurable excitement with the news that the Reform Bill had successfully passed the Commons, and had only to go through the Upper House to become law. The ignorant people considered the triumph already assured, and began to wonder why something wonderful did not immediately happen to change the current of their lives and issue in a new prosperity and affluence. But others shook their heads, and said the Lords would be certain to throw it out, whilst some argued that they would not dare, when the mind of the country had been so emphatically declared.

The Duke was very doubtful as to the result.

“The Duke of Wellington will fight it tooth and nail,” he said to those who asked his opinion, “and I think he will carry the House with him. My kinsman, young Marchmont, tells me that if the Lords refuse to pass it, they will urge the King to make such a number of new Whig peers as shall suffice to carry it in the teeth of all opposition. His Majesty is very averse to such a step, though anxious for the passage of the bill. It remains to be seen what will happen. But I do not think the Iron Duke will give way.”

All this talk sufficed to keep the country alive and excited through the early autumn months. Eustace wrote regularly, sometimes to the Duke, sometimes to Bride; and she wrote to him according to promise, telling him the news of the place, her own particular history, and the doings of Saul. Eustace himself wrote to Saul from time to time, and received answers from the wild young man always breathing a spirit of personal loyalty and devotion; but nothing which passed induced him for one moment to give up his wild life. His boat was always speeding between the shores of England and France. He was seldom at home, and when in the cottage on the beach, seldom to be spoken with by any of those who would gladly have tried to approach him for his own good. Bride once or twice encountered him, and spoke gently to him; but though he stood before her silently and with an outward aspect of respect, he would scarcely give her back a word, and only appeared to listen to her with any willingness when she told him of Eustace.

He sometimes went into Pentreath, and addressed meetings there, in response to invitations from old associates; but his personal interest in the place and in politics seemed to have flagged just now. The passing of the measure upon which his heart had been set took away from him his sense of grievance, and robbed that side of his character of its main element. He shared the half-ignorant expectations of the lower classes, that as soon as the Reform Bill became law some great change in the condition of the people would result immediately from it; and he supposed this change was already going on in other places, and would soon reach the West-Country. If that was so, his task was over for the present, until some new agitation was set on foot. Meantime the free and lawless life he was leading was all-sufficient for him. He was the hero of St. Bride’s Bay, the most successful man all along the coast, and was not only making money fast, but was enjoying his life as he had perhaps never enjoyed it before.

But the old class hatred which had long burned within him was still smouldering as fiercely as before, and only wanted a breath of wind to fan it to a raging flame.

Nor was this breath long wanting; for in November came the news that the Lords had thrown out the bill, that for the moment it was dead, could not pass into law, that the battle would have to be fought all over again (as most people thought), and that the Lords had shown themselves once and for all the fierce and inveterate enemies of the rights and liberties of the people.