“Ah!” said Bumpkin, “and what d’ye think?—it wornt our counsellor, that is the Queen’s Counsellor nuther; he wornt there although I paid un, but I spoase he’ll gie up the money, Nancy?”
“Were it much, Tom?”
“Farty guineas!”
“Farty guineas, Tom! Why, it wur enough to set up housekeepin wi—and thee only winned twenty-five, Tom; why thic winnin were a heavy loss I think.”
“Now, lookee ere,” said Bumpkin; “I oughter had five undered, as Laryer Prigg said, our case were that good, but lor it baint sartain: gie I a little gin and water, Nancy—thee ain’t asked I to have a drap since I bin oame.”
“Lor, Tom, thee knows I be all for thee, and that all be thine.”
“It beant much, it strikes me; lor, lor, whatever shall us do wirout pigs and sheep, and wirout thic bull. I be fit to cry, Nancy, although I winned the case.”
Tom had his gin and water and smoked his pipe, and went to bed and dreamed of all that had taken place. He rose with the lark and went into the fields and enjoyed once again the fresh morning air, and the sweet scent of the new hayrick in the yard; and, without regarding it, the song of the lark as it shot heavenward and poured down its stream of glad music: but there was amidst all a sadness of spirit and a feeling of desolation. It was not like the old times when everything seemed to welcome him about the farm wherever he went. The work of “the man” was everywhere. But the harvest was got in, and a plentiful harvest it was: the corn was threshed, and one day Mr. Bumpkin went to market with his little bags of samples of the newly-housed grain. Everybody was glad to see him, for he was known everywhere as a regular upright and down-straight man. Every farmer and every corn-dealer and cattle-dealer congratulated him in his homely way on his success. They looked at his samples and acknowledged they were very bright and weighty. “I never liked that Snooks feller,” was the general cry, and at the farmers’ ordinary, which was held every market day at the “Plough,” every one who knew Bumpkin shook hands and wished him well, and after dinner, before they broke up, Farmer Gosling proposed his health, and said how proud he “were that his old neighbour had in the beautiful words o’ the National Anthem, ‘confounded their politicks’: and he hoped that the backbone o’ old England, which were the farmers, wornt gwine to be broked jist yet awhile. Farmin might be bad, but yet wi little cheaper rents and a good deal cheaper rates and taxes, there’d be good farmin and good farmers in England yit.”
Now this speech, I saw in my dream, brought down the
house. Everyone said it was more to the point than the half-mile speeches which took up so much of the newspapers to the exclusion of murders, burglaries and divorces. And in truth, now I come to look at it in my waking moments, I respectfully commend it to our legislators, or what is better, to their constituencies, as embodying on this subject both the principles of true conservatism and true liberalism: and I don’t see what the most exacting of politicians can require more than that.