"Well, well, Clive!" answered his companion, "I will not jeopardise you long; it is my intention to go on this very night, so do not be alarmed. I thank you much for what you have done, which is as much or more than I could expect, and am only sorry that poor Helen has been injured in my cause."
Clive looked at him steadfastly for a moment or two, with his usual calm, steady, grave expression of countenance, and then replied, with a faint smile, "It is curious, Norries, how, whenever men are blamed by their best friends for a foolish action when it is committed, or warned against a rash action which they are determined to commit, they always affect to believe that there is some personal feeling actuating their counsellor, and persuade themselves that his advice is not good, not by trying it on the principles of reason, but by their own prejudices. I have no personal fears in the matter; I anticipate no danger to myself or to my family; neither should you think so. Last night I was ready to have shed my blood to insure your safety, which I certainly should not have been likely to do if I were a man full of the cold calculations you suppose----"
"Well, well, well, Clive!" said Norries, interrupting him, "I was wrong, I was wrong: think of it no more; but one meets so much cold calculation in this life, that one's heart gets chilled to one's best friends. My coming might, indeed, as you say, be what the world would call rash; but every attempt must be estimated by its object, and till you know mine, do not judge me hastily. Where I was wrong, was in not giving you sufficient intimation of my intention, that you might have prepared and let me know when I could land without risk; but the man I sent over to you was delayed one whole day for a passage, and that day made a great difference."
"It did," answered Clive; "for I had barely time to send my own two men away to a distance, and get others, in whom I could better trust, to help me. I had no means either of giving you warning that there was a great movement at Barhampton, and that the officers were evidently on the look-out for some one on the coast. You only said that you would land in the cove between nine and ten, and that I must show a light due east of the cove mouth to guide you, as there was no moon. I had nothing for it, therefore, but to make ready against attack, in order that you might get back to the boat if you were the person these men were looking for. But now, Norries, I am very anxious to hear what is your object, for it should be a great one to induce you to undertake such a risk."
"It is a great one," answered Norries, with his gray eyes flashing under his contracted brow: "no less than the salvation of my country, Clive. In that last affair, the rash fools of the manufacturing districts hurried on, against all persuasion, before matters were half ripe, with the light spirit of the old Gauls: firm in the onset, daunted by the first cheek, and tame and crouching in defeat. Had they behaved like men, I would have remained with them to the last, to perish or to suffer; but there was no shame in abandoning men who abandoned their own cause at the very first frown of fortune. Now there is a brighter prospect before me and before England. There are sterner, calmer, more determined spirits, ready and willing to dig a mine beneath the gaudy fabric of corruption and tyranny, which has been built up by knavish statesmen in this land, and to spring the mine when it is dug. The boasted constitution of England, which protects and nurses a race of privileged tyrants, and refuses justice--ay, and almost food--to the great mass of the people, is like one of the feudal castles of the old barons of the land, built high and strong, to protect them in their aggressions upon their neighbours, and in their despotic rule over their serfs. But there have been times in this and other lands when the serfs, driven to madness by unendurable tyranny, have, with the mattock and the axe of their daily toil, dug beneath the walls of the stronghold, and cast it in ruins to the ground. So will we, Clive; so will we!"
Clive crossed his arms upon his chest, and gazed at him with a thoughtful and a melancholy look; and when he had done he shook his head sadly, as if his mind could take no part in the enthusiastic expectations of his companion.
"Why do you shake your head, Clive?" demanded Norries, impatiently.
"Because I have lived long enough, my good friend," replied Clive, "to see some hundreds of these schemes devised, perfected, executed, and every one has brought ruin upon the authors, and worked no amelioration in the institutions of the land."
"Simply because men are tame under injuries; simply because they submit to injustice; simply because, out of every ten men in the land, there is not one who has a just notion of the dignity of man's nature, or a just appreciation of man's rights," was the eager reply of Norries. "But their eyes have been opened, Clive; the burden is becoming intolerable; the very efforts that have been made, and the struggles that have been frustrated, have taught our fellow countrymen that there is something to struggle for, some great object for endeavour. They have asked themselves, what? and we have taught them. One success, only one great success, and the enormous multitude of those who are justly discontented with the foul and corrupt system which has been established, but who have been daunted by repeated failures, will rise as one man, and claim that which is due to the whole human race, sweeping away all obstacles with the might and the majesty of a torrent. You, Clive, you, I am sure, are not insensible to the wrongs which we all suffer."
"I am neither unaware that there are many evils tolerated by law, nor many iniquities sanctioned by law," replied Clive, "nor insensible to the necessity of their removal; but at the same time, I am fully convinced that there is a way by which they can be removed--and that the only way in which they ever will be removed--without violence or bloodshed, or the many horrors and disasters which must always accompany anything like popular insurrection. When the people of England think fit to make their voice heard--I mean the great mass of the people--that voice is strong enough to sweep away, slowly but surely, every one of the wrongs of which we have cause to complain."