Eve laughed, but declared that Sir George Templemore was better qualified than herself to answer such a question.
"We are said to be a people of facts, rather than a people of theories," continued Mrs. Bloomfield, without attending to the reference of the young lady, "and any coin that offers passes, until another that is better, arrives. It is a singular, but a very general mistake, I believe, of the people of this country, in supposing that they can exist under the present régime, when others would fail, because their opinions keep even pace with, or precede the actual condition of society; whereas, those who have thought and observed most on such subjects, agree in thinking the very reverse to be the case."
"This would be a curious condition for a government so purely conventional," observed Sir George, with interest, "and it certainly is entirely opposed to the state of things all over Europe."
"It is so, and yet there is no great mystery in it after all. Accident has liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are like a vehicle on the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed beyond the point of resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid of horses. One may follow with the team, and hook on when it gets to the bottom, but there is no such thing as keeping company with it until it arrives there."
"You will allow, then, that there is a bottom?'
"There is a bottom to every thing--to good and bad; happiness and misery; hope, fear, faith and charity; even to a woman's mind, which I have sometimes fancied the most bottomless thing in nature. There may, therefore, well be a bottom even to the institutions of America."
Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his class always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is about to favour his own political predilections, and he felt encouraged to push the subject further.
"And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by collision, and opposition is known even to create love.
Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd. She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her country's social organization, as is almost universally the case with the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her sentiments on such a point.
"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.