“Faith that’s more than some of us can say,” said Shandon, and he eagerly clapped the note into his pocket.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
Our imprisoned Captain announced, in smart and emphatic language in his prospectus, that the time had come at last when it was necessary for the gentlemen of England to band together in defence of their common rights and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign revolutions, by intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of mill-owners and cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses whom they gulled and led. “The ancient monarchy was insulted,” the Captain said, “by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and the name of English Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without defence, and exposed to assault and contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was sacred, for they believed in nothing holy; no history venerable, for they were too ignorant to have heard of the past; and no law was binding which they were strong enough to break, when their leaders gave the signal for plunder. It was because the kings of France mistrusted their gentlemen,” Mr. Shandon remarked, “that the monarchy of Saint Louis went down: it was because the people of England still believed in their gentlemen, that this country encountered and overcame the greatest enemy a nation ever met: it was because we were headed by gentlemen, that the Eagles retreated before us from the Donro to the Garonne: it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept the plain of Waterloo.”
Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when the Captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out laughing.
“You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected,” Shandon said, slily looking up from his papers—“that’s your true sort of test. I have used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times, and I never knew the Duke to fail.”
The Captain then went on to confess, with much candour, that up to the present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest of their order as they did the management of their estates, or the settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the press by professional proctors and advocates. That time Shandon professed to consider was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must be their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave, strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates: they must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall; “that’s a dig at Bacon’s people, Mr. Bungay,” said Shandon, turning round to the publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. “Hang him, pitch into him, Capting,” he said with exultation: and turning to Warrington, wagged his dull head more vehemently than ever, and said, “For a slashing article, sir, there’s nobody like the Capting—no-obody like him.”
The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr. Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a journal, of which the principles were so-and-so. “These men are proud of their order, and anxious to uphold it,” cried out Captain Shandon, flourishing his paper with a grin. “They are loyal to their Sovereign, by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their Church, where they would have their children worship, and for which their forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what the gentlemen of England—yes, the gentlemen of England (we’ll have that in large caps, Bungay, my boy) have made it—the greatest and freest in the world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed which secured our liberties at Runnymede—”
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Bungay.
“An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt,” Pen said, with great gravity.
“It’s the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay,” Warrington said, on which the publisher answered, “All right, I dare say,” and yawned, though he said, “Go on, Capting.”