Milverton. You malign us. If I must give any account for my personal predilection for modern times, it consists perhaps in this, that we may now speak our mind. What Tennyson says of his own land,
“The land where, girt with friend or foe,
A man may say the thing he will,”—
may be said, in some measure, of the age in which we live. This is an inexpressible comfort. This doubles life. These things surely may be said in favour of the present age, not with a view to puff it up, but so far to encourage ourselves, as we may by seeing that the world does not go on for nothing, that all the misery, blood, and toil that have been spent, were not poured out in vain. Could we have our ancestors again before us, would they not rejoice at seeing what they had purchased for us: would they think it any compliment to them to extol their times at the expense of the present, and so to intimate that their efforts had led to nothing?
Ellesmere. “I doubt,” as Lord Eldon would have said; no, upon second thoughts, I do not doubt. I feel assured that a good many of these said ancestors you are calling up would be much discomforted at finding that all their suffering had led to no sure basis of persecution of the other side.
Dunsford. I wonder, Ellesmere, what you would have done in persecuting times. What escape would your sarcasm have found for itself?
Milverton. Some orthodox way, I daresay. I do not think he would have been particularly fond of martyrdom.
Ellesmere. No. I have no taste for making torches for truth, or being one: I prefer humane darkness to such illumination. At the same time one cannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about the incomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce upon, one must have shown that one disagreed with all parties.
Dunsford. Do not say “one:” I should not have disagreed with the great Protestant leaders in the Reformation, for instance.
Ellesmere. Humph.
Milverton. If we get aground upon the Reformation, we shall never push off again—else would I say something far from complimentary to those Protestant proceedings which we may rather hope were Tudoresque than Protestant.