Had Mr. Crane known the exact feelings with which Coverdale grasped a finger-glass, and mentally calculated the amount of force it would require to launch the missile against the chinchilla-crowned head of his opposite neighbour, that worthy man would scarcely have ventured to continue his mild and meaningless prosing so contentedly.
CHAPTER XII.—HARRY PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT.
The moment Harry reseated himself at the dining-table, two of his old college friends placed themselves beside him, and plunging at once into recollections of “auld-lang-syne,” completely monopolised him. The sound of his own name eagerly pronounced, roused him at length from an interesting reminiscence of how gloriously drunk Jones of Magdalen had been at Tippleton’s wine-party (when he would sing a pathetic ballad, beginning, “There’s a wail on the mountain!” and was stopped by a roar of laughter, chorusing the inquiry, “how the deuce it—the whale—got there?”). The speaker was Mr. Hazlehurst. “Excuse my interrupting your conversation for a few minutes, Mr. Coverdale,” he began, “but we want your opinion. You’ve travelled and seen the working of different tariff regulations, and had opportunities of comparing the prosperity of other nations with that of our own, while at the same time you are a sufficiently large landed-proprietor to give you a stake in the country, and to induce you to feel a strong interest in the general prospects of the agricultural population. I am sure you must agree with me in considering protection a most essential and salutary measure.”
“If I might be allowed to make just one observation before Mr. Coverdale favours us with his views on this important question,” insinuated Mr. Crane, in the mildest and most affectionate tone of voice imaginable—wine always reducing this excellent man to a state of weak and inappropriate philanthropy—“if I might observe that, with the highest respect for, and admiration of, the agricultural population of this great country, I feel it incompatible with my feelings as a Protestant, and therefore, so to speak, in a general way as a brother, not to say as a man also, and more particularly as a mill-owner, to forget the thousands of operatives who crowd our large cities, and who, when satisfied with cheap bread, add to the dignity and prosperity of the nation; but, on the contrary, when deprived of this means of support, object to resign themselves to the dispensations of a beneficent Providence, and fly in the face of society as chartists, levellers, red-republicans, and all that is dangerous and subversive of morality and security of property. If I may so far presume as to call Mr. Coverdale’s attention to the desirableness of providing food at a rate which will enable the manufacturing classes to exist without constantly working themselves up into a state of illegal desperation, I shall feel that I have, if I may be allowed the expression, unburthened my conscience.” Thus saying, Mr. Crane cast a timid and appealing look from Harry to his host, and sipped a glass of Burgundy with the air of a man apologising for some misdeed.
“It is not a subject upon which I have ever expended any vast amount of consideration,” began Coverdale, wishing in his secret soul that he might have the feeding of Mr. Crane for the ensuing six months entrusted to him, in which case he would have afforded that gentleman an opportunity of practically testing the merits of very cheap bread indeed, and of nothing else—except, perhaps, cold spring water; “but the common sense of the matter appears to lie in a nutshell: the two great divisions of the poorer classes are the manufacturing poor and the agricultural poor, the manufacturers being the most numerous—to sacrifice one to the other is unfair, but to offer up the greater to the less is ridiculous. Free-trade has had a fair trial, and has been proved to benefit the masses, though it lies heavily on the land-owners. Well, then, relieve land of its burthens, and make the income-tax permanent to reimburse the Exchequer. That’s the line I should take if I were Premier, which, thank heaven, I’m not.”
As Harry concluded, two or three men began to speak at once, but Mr. Hazlehurst, by a solemn wave of the hand, immediately silenced them. That excellent magistrate had drunk more wine than was by any means good for him; his constitution was gouty, and he had not had a fit for some time; before such attacks he was usually as irritable as though his brain were a hedgehog, and society at large a pack of wire-haired terriers attempting to unroll it. Claret was the most unwholesome wine he could take, and on the evening in question he had imbibed nearly a bottle thereof; but of all this dessous des cartes, Harry was innocently unconscious.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” began Mr. Hazlehurst, solemnly, “but the right of reply at present rests with myself. Moreover, if my ears did not deceive me, Mr. Coverdale has made an observation which I must call upon him either to explain or retract; but in the first place, let me express my surprise and regret, sir,” here he addressed himself pointedly to Harry, “that a young man in your position, a large landed-proprietor, a lover of field-sports, possessing a practical knowledge of land, and a personal acquaintance with the habits and customs of the agricultural poor—the bone and sinews of our country, should thus turn against and betray the interests of the class to which he belongs, and league himself with those who would, in their shortsightedness, sap the vitals of that free and independent character which has made us the great nation that we are. With regard to the observation to which I alluded, I believe, that having stigmatised the opinions I hold as a sacrifice of the greater to the less, you deliberately pronounced those opinions ridiculous. Have I not repeated your words correctly?”
“I certainly said that to sacrifice the greater number to the less would be ridiculous,” returned Harry, completely taken aback at this sudden and unexpected accusation; “but I only meant—”