Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

“Because, sir, if once the people begin to think for themselves, to see for themselves, and to understand the meaning of things around them, they soon won’t stand what they see—won’t stand that one set of men in the country should have everything, and roll in wealth and wallow in luxury, whilst they can’t get bread to put in their children’s mouths. They’ll think it’s time their turn came—as they did in France, I’ve heard, not so very long ago, and that’ll be a bad day for you and for all those like you.”

“Yes,” answered Eustace, with emphasis, “such a bad day for us, and (if that form of revolution were repeated) such a bad day for England too—ay, and for you, Tresithny, and your class—that we men who recognise and deplore the injustice and tyranny of the present system are resolved to try and prevent it by making the people’s cause ours, and ridding them of their grievous wrongs before they shall have been goaded to madness and rise in ignorant savagery, and become butchers and not reformers. The French Revolution turned France into a veritable hell upon earth. What we are striving to accomplish is to bring a day of peace and plenty, and justice and happiness upon England, without the shedding of one drop of blood, without any but gentle measures, and the increase of confidence and goodwill between class and class.”

“And do you think you are going to do it?” asked Saul, with a grim look about his mouth, which Eustace did not altogether understand.

“I think so—I trust so. Earnest and devoted men of every class are banded together with that object. But, Tresithny, we want the help of the people. We want the help of such as you. What is the use of our striving to give their rights to the people if they remain in stolid apathy and do not ask for them? We must awaken and arouse them; we must teach them discontent with their present state of misery and ignorance, and then open the way for them to escape from it. Do you understand at all what I mean? We must awaken and arouse them. They are—in this part of the world, at least—like men sleeping an unnatural drugged sleep. The poison of ignorance and apathy is like opium in its effects upon their spirits. We must awaken and arouse them before there is hope for cure. Tresithny, we want men of intelligence like you to help in this work. You know their ways and their thoughts. You can appeal to their slumbering senses far better than we can do. We want to interest those who live with them and amongst them, and whose language they understand as they cannot understand ours. There is a great work to be accomplished by such as you, Tresithny, if you will but join the good cause.”

Saul was roused by a style of talk for which much of his recent brooding had prepared the way, and made a reply which showed Eustace that here at least there was no impassable barrier of ignorance or apathy to be overcome. In ten minutes’ time the men were in earnest talk, Eustace giving his companion a masterly summary of the state of parties and the feeling of the day (vastly different from anything he had heard before, and before which his mental horizon seemed to widen momentarily), and he joining in with question and retort so apt and pointed, that Eustace was more and more delighted with his recruit, and felt that to gain such a man as Saul Tresithny to his side would be half the battle in St. Bride’s.

But even here he could not achieve quite the success he coveted. He could implant the gospel of discontent easily enough—the soil was just of the kind in which the plant would take ready root; but with that other side of the doctrine—that endeavour to make men distinguish between the abuses, and the men who had hitherto appeared to profit by them—ay, there was the rub!

“You speak, sir, sometimes of doing all this without making the people hate their tyrants and their oppressors; but that isn’t human nature. If they’ve a battle to fight against those that hold the power now, and if they are stirred up to fight it, they will hate them with a deadly hatred; and even when the victory is ours, as you say it will and must be one day, the hatred will go on and on. It’s in our blood, and it’ll be there till the world’s end. We may forget it whilst we’re sleeping; but once you and the like of you wake us up, it won’t sleep again in a hurry; no, and it shall not either!” And the young man raised his arm and shook his fist in the air with a wild gesture, as though hurling defiance at the whole world.

“Ah! Tresithny, that is a natural feeling at the outset; and although we regret it, we cannot wonder at it, nor try to put it down with too strong a hand. But it is not the right feeling—and the right one will prevail at last, as I fully hope and trust. When we are boys at school and under restraint, against which we kick and fret, we look upon our masters as natural enemies; yet as we grow to manhood and meet them again, they become valued friends, and we laugh together over former animosities. And so it will be when the great work of reform is carried out in the generous spirit that we strive to instil; and you amongst others will be the first to hold out the hand of fellowship to all men, when wrongs have been righted, and society has come forth purified and ennobled by the struggle.”

“Never!” cried Saul, with a look of such concentrated hatred that Eustace was startled. “You may talk till you are black in the face, sir, but you’ll never talk out the hatred that is inborn between class and class. I know what that is. I am a man of the people, and for the rights of the people I am ready to live and to die. But I HATE THE RACE OF TYRANTS AND OPPRESSORS. I hate, and shall always hate and loathe them. Do not talk to me of goodwill and friendship. I will have none of it. I would set up a gallows over yonder, if I had my way, and hang every noble of the land upon it—as the French set up their guillotine, and set the heads of the king and queen and nobles of the land rolling from it!”

This was not by any means the spirit Eustace had desired to kindle in his disciple; but, after all, might not such sentiments be but the natural ebullition of enthusiasm in one who was young, untrained, and ardent? Certainly it was preferable in his eyes to apathy, and he was not disposed to strain the relations newly set up between them by opposing such sanguinary statements.