“With us the duties, as far as Christian duties can be said to be optional, are voluntary; and the voluntary discharge of duties, like the voluntary support of religion, we know, from sad experience, to be sometimes imperfectly performed, at others intermitted, and often wholly neglected. Oh! it is a happy country this, a great and a good country; and how base, how wicked, how diabolical it is to try to set such a family as this against their best friends, their pastor and their landlord; to instil dissatisfaction and distrust into their simple minds, and to teach them to loathe the hand, that proffers nothing but regard or relief. It is shocking, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I often say, Sir,” said Mrs. Hodgins, “to my old man, to keep away from them Chartists.”
“Chartists! dear, who are they? I never heard of them.”
“Why, Sir, they are the men that want the five pints.”
“Five pints! why you don’t say so; oh! they are bad men, have nothing to do with them. Five pints! why that is two quarts and a half; that is too much to drink if it was water; and if any thing else, it is beastly drunkenness. Have nothing to do with them.”
“Oh! no, Sir, it is five points of law.”
“Tut—tut—tut! what have you got to do with law, my dear?”
“By gosh, Aunty,” said Mr. Slick, “you had better not cut that pie: you will find it rather sour in the apple sarce, and tough in the paste, I tell you.”
“Yes, Sir,” she replied, “but they are a unsettling of his mind. What shall I do? for I don’t like these night meetings, and he always comes home from ‘em cross and sour-like.”
“Well, I am sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Hopewell, “I wish I could see him; but I can’t, for I am bound on a journey. I am sorry to hear it, dear. Sam, this country is so beautiful, so highly cultivated, so adorned by nature and art, and contains so much comfort and happiness, that it resembles almost the garden of Eden. But, Sam, the Serpent is here, the Serpent is here beyond a doubt. It changes its shape, and alters its name, and takes a new colour, but still it is the Serpent, and it ought to be crushed. Sometimes it calls itself liberal, then radical, then chartist, then agitator, then repealer, then political dissenter, then anti-corn leaguer, and so on. Sometimes it stings the clergy, and coils round them, and almost strangles them, for it knows the Church is its greatest enemy, and it is furious against it. Then it attacks the peers, and covers them with its froth and slaver, and then it bites the landlord. Then it changes form, and shoots at the Queen, or her ministers, and sets fire to buildings, and burns up corn to increase distress; and, when hunted away, it dives down into the collieries, or visits the manufactories, and maddens the people, and urges them on to plunder and destruction. It’s a melancholy thing to think of; but he is as of old, alive and active, seeing whom he can allure and deceive, and whoever listens is ruined for ever.