“It is more, it is an abominable injustice!” she cried.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It seems so. It certainly seems hard. But let me—don’t be angry with me if I put another side.” He spoke with careful moderation. “It is my experience that good, easy men, such as I take the rector of Riddsley to be, rarely do a thing which seems cruel, without reason. A clergyman, for instance; he has generally thought out more clearly than you or I what it is right to say in the pulpit; how far it is lawful, and then again how far it is wise to deal with matters of debate. He has considered how far a pronouncement may offend some, and so may render his office less welcome to them. That is one consideration. Probably, too, he has considered that a statement, if events falsify it, will injure him with his poorer parishioners who look up to him as wiser than themselves. Well, when such a man has laid down a rule and finds a younger clergyman bent upon transgressing it, is it unreasonable if he puts his foot down?”
“I had not looked at it in that way.”
“And that, perhaps, is not all,” he resumed. “You know that a thing may be true, but that it is not always wise to proclaim it. It may be too strong meat. It may be true, for instance, that corn-dealers make an unfair profit out of the poor; but it is not a truth that you would tell a hungry crowd outside the corn-dealer’s shop on a Saturday night.”
“No,” Mary allowed reluctantly. “Perhaps not.”
“And again—I have nothing to say against Colet. It is enough for me that he is a friend of yours——”
“I have a reason for being interested in him. I am sure that if you heard him——”
“I might be carried away? Precisely. But is it not possible that he has seen much of one side of this question, much of the poverty for which a cure is sought, without being for that reason fitted to decide what the cure should be?”
Mary nodded. “Have you formed any opinion yourself?” she asked.
But he was too prudent to enter on a discussion. He saw that so far he had impressed her with what he had said, and he was not going to risk the advantage he had gained. “No,” he said, “I am weighing the matter at this moment. We are on the verge of a crisis on the Corn Laws, and it is my duty to consider the question carefully. I am doing so. I have hitherto been a believer in the tax. I may change my views, but I shall not do so hastily. As for your friend, I will consider what can be done, but I fear that he has been imprudent.”