"I do not know what to think of this plan," said the Baronet. "I find your flowery speakers are no more to be depended upon, in the present day, than the oldest drudges in corruption!
"You know, cousin, how I hate corruption. It is undoing us all, It will undo the nation! The influence of the crown is monstrous. The aristocracy is degraded by annual batches of mundungus and parchment lords; and the const.i.tution is tumbling about our ears. The old English spirit is dead. The nation has lost all sense and feeling.
The people are so vile and selfish that they are bought and sold like swine; to which, for my part, I think they have been very properly compared. There is no such thing now as public virtue. No, no! That happy time is gone by! Every man is for all he can get; and as for the means, he cares nothing about them. There is absolutely no such thing as patriotism existing; and, to own the truth, d.a.m.n me if I believe there is a man in the kingdom that cares one farthing for those rights and liberties, about which so many people that you and I know pretend to bawl!"
"This is a severe supposition indeed. It implicates your dearest and most intimate friends. Only recollect, Sir Barnard, what would your feelings be, if the same thing should be a.s.serted of you?"
"Of me, truly! No, no, cousin Evelyn; I think I have been pretty tolerably tried! The Minister knows very well he could move the Monument sooner than me. I love the people; and am half mad to see that they have no love for themselves. Why do not they meet? Why do not they pet.i.tion? Why do not they besiege the throne with their clamors? They are no better than beasts of burthen! If they were any thing else, the whole kingdom would rise, as one man, and drive this arrogant upstart from the helm. I say, Mr. Evelyn, I love the people; I love my country; I love the const.i.tution; and I hate the swarms of mushroom peers, and petty traders, that are daily pouring in upon us, to overturn it."
Was it weakness of memory? Was it the blindness of egotism? Or was it inordinate stupidity, that Sir Barnard should forget, as he constantly did, that his father had been a common porter in a warehouse, had raised an immense fortune by trade, had purchased the boroughs which descended to his son, and had himself been bought with the t.i.tle of Baronet by a former minister? Was it so very long ago, that Sir Barnard, with such a swell of conscious superiority, should begin to talk of the antiquity of his family? But, above all, how did he happen not to recollect that the disappointment which now preyed upon and cankered his heart was the refusal of a peerage?
I really can give no satisfactory answer to these questions. I can only state a fact: which daily occurs in a thousand other instances.
Mr. Evelyn brought the Baronet back to the point; and remarked to him that, at the present period, when the Minister was so powerful in numbers, to bring in a mere yes and no member with himself would be a certain mode of not serving the country, the const.i.tution, and the people, whom he so dearly loved; that the safety which is derived from a man"s insignificance is but a bad pledge; and that he thought himself very certain I was as dear, nay and as incorruptible, a lover of old England, or at least of the welfare of mankind, as Sir Barnard himself.
"Shew me such a man, cousin," exclaimed the Baronet, "and I will worship him! I will worship him, Mr. Evelyn! I will worship him! But I am persuaded he is not to be found. I have learned, from too fatal experience, that I am certain of n.o.body but myself! Small as the number in Opposition is, if they were but all as sound-hearted as I am, and would set their shoulders to the wheel and lay themselves out for the good of their country as I do, I say it, Mr. Evelyn, and take my word for it I say true, we should overturn the Minister and his corrupt gang in six months! Nay, in half the time! However, as you are so strongly persuaded of the soundness of the gentleman"s principles whom you recommend, let me see him, and talk to him; and then I will tell you more of my opinion."
"There is one point, Sir Barnard, on which I suppose I need not insist; it is so obvious."
"What is that, cousin?"
"You being as you state a man of principle, and incapable of being bia.s.sed to act against what you conceive to be the good of the nation, you must expect that every man, who resembles you in patriotism and fort.i.tude, will act from himself, and will resist any attempt to control him."
"Oh, as to that, we need say nothing about it. Those things are never mentioned, now-a-days: they are perfectly understood. But who is your young friend? Is he a man of property?"
"No."
He will be the more manageable, thought Sir Barnard.
"Where will he get a qualification?"
"I will provide him with one."
"You say he is a gentleman."
"As I understand the term, he certainly is: for, in addition to those manners and accomplishments which are most pleasing to the world, he not only possesses a good education but a sense of justice which makes him regard every man as his brother; and which will neither suffer him to crouch to the haughty nor trample on the poor."
"Why, that is very good. Very right. I myself will crouch to no man.
And, as for modesty and humility, in the youth of the present day, why they are very rarely found: and so I shall be happy to meet with them."
"Nay, but Mr. Trevor delivers his sentiments with rather an unguarded freedom, and with peculiar energy, or indeed he would be ill qualified to rise in the a.s.sembly of which I wish to see him a member, and undauntedly oppose the arrogant a.s.sertions that are there daily made."
"Arrogant! G---- confound me, Mr. Evelyn, if I am not sometimes struck dumb, with what I hear in that house! There is that Scotchman in particular, who will get up, after our allies have been defeated, our troops driven like sheep from swamp to swamp, where they die of the rot, and our ships carried by hundreds into the enemy"s ports, and will roundly a.s.sert, notwithstanding these facts are as notorious as his own political profligacy, that our victories are splendid, our armies undiminished, and our trade protected and flourishing beyond all former example! He makes my hair stand on end to hear him! And when I look in his face, and see the broad familiar easy impudence with which he laughs at me and all of us, for our astonishment, why, as I tell you, d.a.m.n me if I am not dumb-founded! I am struck all of a heap! I have not a word! I am choaked with rage, and amazement!
Compared to him your brothel-keeper is a modest person! Were but our fortresses as impenetrable as his forehead, curse me if they would ever be taken. He is bomb-proof. The returns that lie on the table can make no impression upon him; and you may see him sneer and laugh if they are pointed to in the course of an argument.
"In short, cousin Evelyn, the nation is ruined. I see that clear enough. Our const.i.tution will soon be changed to a pure despotism.
Barracks are building; soldiers line our streets: our commission of the peace is filled with the creatures of a corrupt administration; constables are only called out to keep up the farce; and we are at present under little better than a military government."
Though Mr. Evelyn would have been better satisfied, had Sir Barnard"s sense of national grievances been equally strong but less acrimonious, yet he was pleased to find that these grievances were now more than ever become a kind of common-place bead roll of repet.i.tions: of which their being so familiarly run over by the Baronet was sufficient proof: for a people that are continually talking of the evils that afflict them are not, as Sir Barnard and others have supposed, dead to these evils. The nation that remarks, discusses, and complains of its wrongs, will finally have them redressed.
CHAPTER V
_Serious doubts on serious subjects: Personal qualms, and considerations: An interview with Sir Barnard: Fears and precautions, or a burnt child dreads the fire_
What farther pa.s.sed in the conversation I have recited was of little moment: except that an appointment was made, on the following day, for me to be introduced to the Baronet.
Thus far successful, Mr. Evelyn returned; and, as he was a man of a firm and ingenuous mind, he thought it adviseable to hold a consultation with me and my friends, on the prosecution of his plan.
That personal considerations might in no degree influence the enquiry, he first proposed the question, without intimating to what it might lead, of--"how far it became a virtuous man to accept a seat, on those conditions under which a seat only can be obtained, among the representatives of the people?"
Without wearying the reader with the arguments that were adduced, let it suffice to inform him that we all agreed it was a very doubtful case; that, in this as in numerous other instances, manners, customs, and laws, obliged us to conform to many things which were odiously vicious; and that to live in society and rigidly observe those rules of justice which would best promote the general happiness was, speaking absolutely, a thing impossible.
Whether the greatest political characters would best fulfil their duties by refusing to submit to the corrupt influence of elections, to test-oaths, and to the mischiefs of ministerial management within the walls, or whether they ought to comply with them, and exert their utmost faculties in pointing out these evils and endeavouring to have them redressed, was a point on which we all seemed to think the wisest men might suspend their judgment.
In one thing we appeared to be entirely agreed: which was that such pernicious practices were in all probability more frequently exposed, and brought into public discussion, through the medium of an a.s.sembly like this, than they would be did no such a.s.sembly exist.
Neither must I detail what afterward pa.s.sed, before I was brought to accept the proposal of Mr. Evelyn. It would be tedious.
This proposal did not confine itself to the single act of giving me a seat in parliament; and of furnishing me with a qualification. It insisted that the qualification should be a real and not a fict.i.tious deed.
To accept the actual possession of three hundred a-year as a bounty, for which I could make no return, was I own humiliating to my pride.
It made the question continually recur--"Whether it did not give me the air of an impostor? A kind of swindler of sentiment? A pretender to superior virtue, for the purpose of gratifying vice?" It seemed at a blow to rob me of all independence; and leave me a manacled slave to the opinions, not only of Mr. Evelyn, but, by a kind of consignment, of his relation the Baronet; and even to both their humours.
In fine, it was a most painful sacrifice; and required all the amenity and active friendship of Mr. Evelyn to bring to my mind, not only my duties, but, the power that I should have at any time of resigning my seat, returning the deeds, and sheltering myself in my primitive poverty.
To this I added a condition, without which my refusal would have been absolute. It was that I should give a deed of mortgage, bearing interest, to the full value of the lands a.s.signed.
I shall forbear to dwell on sensations that were very active at the moment; which, on one hand, related to all that concerned Mr. Evelyn, my obligations, and something like dependence; and, on the other, to my sudden promised elevation toward the sphere in which my ambition was so eagerly desirous to move. Neither will I insist on that which caused my heart to beat yet more high, the approach that I thus made to the lovely object of all my wishes.
Leaving this endless train of meditation, I proceed to relate events as they occurred.
I attended Mr. Evelyn, according to appointment; and paid my respects to his cousin, Sir Barnard. Having engaged myself thus far, I own I was sufficiently piqued to desire to make a favourable impression: in which I was almost as successful as I myself had hoped.
At the first sight of me the Baronet was prepossessed; and when we entered into conversation and he gave me an opportunity of uttering my sentiments concerning men and measures, I painted so forcibly that he was almost in raptures.
The only circ.u.mstance in which I failed was my frequent interruption, and impatience, when he in turn began to declaim. I had the vice of orators: I heard no man"s arguments, or language, that pleased me so well as my own. I could not listen without an irritating anxiety, that was for ever prompting me to supply a word, suggest a thought, or detect a blunder. And, to a man who loves to make a speech, it is intolerably mortifying to hear himself corrected, and cut short, in the middle of a sentence.
However I was sufficiently guarded not to give any offence that was strong enough to be remembered; and Sir Barnard was so thoroughly engrossed, by the idea of the conspicuous figure which he and his new member should make in the house, that he was absolutely impatient to secure me: being fully persuaded that he had discovered a treasure; of which now, at a general election, he was in considerable danger of being robbed.
The only precaution he took was to draw from me repeated a.s.severations that I would not desert the cause of the people: by which, as I afterward found, he understood his own private opinions; and not that which he had literally expressed. On this head he seemed never satisfied; and the terms in which he spoke, both of the member who had deserted him and of all political tergiversation whatever, were the bitterest that his memory could supply.