‘Pooh!’ said Mr. Luke Byles, who piqued himself on his reading, and was in the habit of asking casual acquaintances if they knew anything of Hobbes; ‘it is right enough that the lower orders should be instructed. But this sectarianism within the Church ought to be put down. In point of fact, these Evangelicals are not Churchmen at all; they’re no better than Presbyterians.’
‘Presbyterians? what are they?’ inquired Mr. Tomlinson, who often said his father had given him ‘no eddication, and he didn’t care who knowed it; he could buy up most o’ th’ eddicated men he’d ever come across.’
‘The Presbyterians,’ said Mr. Dempster, in rather a louder tone than before, holding that every appeal for information must naturally be addressed to him, ‘are a sect founded in the reign of Charles I., by a man named John Presbyter, who hatched all the brood of Dissenting vermin that crawl about in dirty alleys, and circumvent the lord of the manor in order to get a few yards of ground for their pigeon-house conventicles.’
‘No, no, Dempster,’ said Mr. Luke Byles, ‘you’re out there. Presbyterianism is derived from the word presbyter, meaning an elder.’
‘Don’t contradict me, sir!’ stormed Dempster. ‘I say the word presbyterian is derived from John Presbyter, a miserable fanatic who wore a suit of leather, and went about from town to village, and from village to hamlet, inoculating the vulgar with the asinine virus of dissent.’
‘Come, Byles, that seems a deal more likely,’ said Mr. Tomlinson, in a conciliatory tone, apparently of opinion that history was a process of ingenious guessing.
‘It’s not a question of likelihood; it’s a known fact. I could fetch you my Encyclopædia, and show it you this moment.’
‘I don’t care a straw, sir, either for you or your Encyclopædia,’ said Mr. Dempster; ‘a farrago of false information, of which you picked up an imperfect copy in a cargo of waste paper. Will you tell me, sir, that I don’t know the origin of Presbyterianism? I, sir, a man known through the county, intrusted with the affairs of half a score parishes; while you, sir, are ignored by the very fleas that infest the miserable alley in which you were bred.’
A loud and general laugh, with ‘You’d better let him alone Byles’; ‘You’ll not get the better of Dempster in a hurry’, drowned the retort of the too well-informed Mr. Byles, who, white with rage, rose and walked out of the bar.
‘A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen’, continued Mr. Dempster. ‘I was determined to be rid of him. What does he mean by thrusting himself into our company? A man with about as much principle as he has property, which, to my knowledge, is considerably less than none. An insolvent atheist, gentlemen. A deistical prater, fit to sit in the chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers. I will not suffer in my company a man who speaks lightly of religion. The signature of a fellow like Byles would be a blot on our protest.’