Lord Lamerton had reseated himself when he began to talk of Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder. Now he stood up again.
“Julia,” he said, “those Douglas pines had made noble shoots—it is a pity. I shall go to bed, and dream, if I can, that I am lying in clover and not over a bunch of manganese.”
CHAPTER XIV.
MR. JAMES WELSH.
Mrs. Saltren had informed Arminell that she had a brother who was a gentleman. The term “gentleman” is derived from the Latin gens, and signifies a member of a patrician family. But this is not the signification now given it in the vernacular. On the tongue of the people, a gentleman and a lady are those who do no manual labour. A man informs you that he will be a gentleman on a bank-holiday, because he will lounge about with his hands in his pockets, and an old woman who has weeded turnips at ninepence a day becomes a lady when rheumatism invades her limbs, and sends her to the union.
Mr. James Welsh, the brother of Mrs. Saltren, was a gentleman in this, that he belonged to a gens, a class not ancient or aristocratic, but modern, and one that has obtained considerable influence, wields much power and is likely to become dominant—we mean that of the professional journalist and politician. He was a gentleman also in this, that he did no hard manual labour, but few men worked harder than he, but then he dirtied his hands with ink only.
Along the coasts of Scotland and Sweden are terraces raised high above the sea-level, which are pronounced by geologists to be ancient beaches. At one time the waves washed where now sheep graze, and deposited sea-weed and shells where now grow heather and harebells. There are these raised sea-beaches in man, to which conscience at one time reached, where it formed a barrier, and whence it has retreated. But we are wrong in speaking of the retreat of the sea, for actually the level of the ocean is permanent, it is the land which rises, and as it rises leaves the sea below. And so perhaps it is with us. We lift ourselves above old convictions, scruples, principles, and the sometimes sleeping, sometimes tossing sea of conscience no longer touches those points they once fretted. Do we congratulate ourselves on this elevation? Perhaps so, and yet few of us can contemplate the raised beaches left in our hearts by the retiring waves of conscience without a sigh, and a doubt.
Mr. James Welsh said and wrote and did many things as a public journalist and a professional politician which as a boy or young man he would have looked upon as dishonest, false, and mischievous. His conscience no longer troubled him in his business, but in home relations he was blameless.
Perhaps one reason why the sea-level alters with us, is that we are always endeavouring to reclaim land from it, thrusting our sea-walls of self-interest further out, to take in more field from being overwashed. We make our line of conscience co-terminous with our line of self-interest. Outside this line the waves may toss and roar, within they may not cast a flake of foam, or waft a breath of ozone. How much thunder and buffet we permit outside our sea-wall of self-interest against any rock or sand-bank that stands unenclosed! but we only suffer the water of self-reproach to sweep with a shallow swash and soothing murmur the outside of the bank we have cast up.
What excellent words those are to conjure with and wherewith blind our own eyes as well as those of others—Political Party and The Public Weal! We regard ourselves as devoted to the respublica, when, in reality, we care only for our private interests; and our zeal for the public good is hot or cold according as our dividends are affected.
If we can show that the welfare of our party can be advanced by making out our neighbour to be a thief and assassin, with what pious energy do we set to work to invent lies to defame him. How we suppress and disguise facts which make against our pet doctrines! To what subterfuges and tricks do we have recourse to colour those facts which cannot be suppressed, to make them look the opposite to what we know them to be!