Political agitators sought to turn this discontent into disaffection. Parliamentary reform was demanded with a considerable show of violence. There was much fierce speaking; numbers of clubs started into existence; individuals disfigured themselves with strange costumes; mobs collected in great multitudes. Presently budding Lafayettes discussed the most convenient length for pikes, and would-be Buonapartes mustered their platoons by moonlight.
There was a good deal that was wicked, and not a little that was grotesque, in these proceedings. One party persisted in seeing only the white side of the shield, and declared they were merely ridiculous; another had eyes only for the black, and exaggerated their danger. Nothing is so fatal to the cause of civil liberty as the abuse of the privileges which it confers. The nation consents to wear chains, to control a rebellious member. Having the gout in its great toe, the body politic restricts its indulgences. It was so at the period of which we are treating. The real amount of danger is a question which the candour of posterity will admit could hardly be discussed with tranquillity at the time. Certain it is, that alarm was very great and very general, and under its pressure the nation resigned for a season some of its dearest birth-rights. Personal liberty was endangered by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; the press was shackled; the right of meeting was limited. Arrests were made far and wide. A north-country squire, trotting quietly along upon his hack to meet the hounds, was swept off to jail, instead of sweeping after the fox, suspected of a design to raise the shepherds. It was a mistake, and it is probable that such were not rare. The practice of receiving information from spies, and still more the air of mystery assumed by those in authority, multiplied the apprehensions which might justly be excited by any tumultuous proceedings.
Cornelius Peach was one of those who were willing to believe the alarm to be in the main unfounded, and he used good-humouredly to quiz his sister for the timidity with which she adopted every rumour of the day. The worthy clerk was clearly in some matters a follower of the philosopher of Abdera. He very much preferred laughter to tears; regarded public affairs with a lofty disdain, so long as his roast, boiled, or hashed was ready at the right time; lived in a Utopia of his own, and was more likely to die of seeing an ass eating figs than of any ordinary calamity. He could not understand why an individual should fret himself concerning parliamentary corruption, tyranny of government, abuse of patronage, or any other stalking-horse of sedition. No one had attempted to bribe him; he felt indifferently free; he was a candidate for no place; he had no vote for anything, and rejoiced that he had not. His even cheerfulness was wont to make his friends declare, that their Peach was all sunny side; there were no signs of shade about him.
His lodger was of a less contented mood: the symptoms of effervescence had assumed a somewhat menacing aspect around his home. For some time much disquiet had prevailed among the miners of Somersetshire, and the same was now rapidly spreading among their Cornish brethren, from Redruth to St. Ives. Minor outrages were of no uncommon occurrence. The dread which Miss Peach seemed to entertain of seeing a modern Jack Straw encamped on Hampstead Heath, was felt on better grounds in the far-west, and caused trepidation among the tea-sipping gossips of Kerrier and Penwith. So the orphans learnt from the letters of Polydore Riches. And they were made rather anxious by perceiving, that the good chaplain seemed in writing, to disguise the real amount of his apprehensions. Often in reading his missives, did Randolph and Helen turn their thoughts fondly towards Trevethlan, and wish they had never left the towers by the sea.
And in the brother such yearnings were quickened by an ever-increasing discontent with his position. This feeling had soon driven him from Winter's chambers, and he was now reading with Mr. Travers, an eminent special pleader. But dissatisfaction was again creeping over him. It was true he did not neglect his studies, and he had duly eaten his dinners to keep Michaelmas Term. Surely there is no fear that any of our old institutions to which a dinner is attached will wholly die. There is a strength in the British appetite, against which utilitarianism may struggle in vain, till hunger and thirst are no more. So at the Inns of Court. The exercises, and moots, and even the revels have vanished, but the dinners remain. Attendance on the former has been commuted into fines to maintain the latter. And long may they endure, those social meetings, where many a lasting friendship is formed, and the bonds of brotherhood cemented, which in England unite an order, declared by D'Aguesseau, aussi ancien que la magistrature, aussi noble que la vertu, aussi nécessaire que la justice.
As a novice, Randolph was partly interested and partly disconcerted on his introduction to these assemblies. He felt a reverence for the old hall, standing on the site of that of the knights whose dust reposed in the neighbouring church. He looked with respect on the coats of arms of the successive treasurers, emblazoned on the oak panelling of the walls, and subscribed with many a name of high distinction. On the dais, beneath the portraits of Littleton and Coke, sat some of the leading advocates of the day, partaking a more luxurious repast than that allotted to the occupants of the floor below. And on the opposite side to the young student were the juniors of the bar, men who had risen, were rising, had not begun to rise, and never would rise.
It was all curious and new. The very gown in which Randolph dined, rustled on his shoulders with a forensic feeling. The repast was apportioned to messes of four, all of which had precisely the same fare. The attendants were called paniers; because—an enemy has suggested—supported by donkeys. The platters were of Peter Piper's metal, and the cups were earthenware. As at the table of Prior's pococurante couple—
"Their ale was strong, their wine was port,
Their meal was large, their grace was short."
Trifles all these: forgotten perhaps by the fortunate lawyer, whose clerk groans under the weight of his brief-bag; ridiculed by the disappointed man, whose early clients have long disappeared; but interesting and entertaining to the neophyte, whose ambition foresees the career of the first, whose self-reliance is too strong to fear the fate of the second.
These last were the feelings which had inspired Randolph in the solitude of Trevethlan Castle, and conjured up those airy visions which seemed so fair in the sight of himself and his sister. The very first encounter with the world had dimmed the prospect for a moment, and the brother's subsequent intercourse with it confirmed rather than diminished his disappointment. It was not that he was disheartened by perceiving how very inadequate an idea he had formed of the labour necessary to attain his object. The long rows of law-calf on Mr. Travers's shelves had no terrors for him. Nor was it that he felt as yet any decided uneasiness at living under a feigned name. He had never for an instant imagined it was wrong, and it had his father's sanction. Yet this circumstance might be a chief source of his discontent. He had not known the levelling tendency of a public school, nor the freedom of college. From those early lessons in the picture-gallery at Trevethlan, he had silently grown up in the consciousness that he should be the head of an ancient race, and perhaps, in building his castle in the air, he regarded himself as an architect in the midst of masons. He never thought of himself as Morton, humble and unknown, but as the representative of a high family, recognized and honoured.