worse: gentlemen by birth. There's the choice
of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his
hole. Leave him to think it over, he'll come right. I think no harm of
him, I've no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I
did what I had to do.'

'Look here, Nevil,' Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: 'I
beg to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our
country the nobles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it,
the people: that's to say, the middle-class and the working-class--fat
and lean. I'm quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They
want it, and they don't get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy
you and I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground
a hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares.'

'The Press of our country!' interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning
parenthesis.

'It's the week-day Parson of the middle-class, colonel. They have their
thinking done for them as the Chinese have their dancing. But, Nevil,
your Dr. Shrapnel seems to treat the traders as identical with the
aristocracy in opposition to his "people." The traders are the cursed
middlemen, bad friends of the "people," and infernally treacherous to
the nobles till money hoists them. It's they who pull down the country.
They hold up the nobles to the hatred of the democracy, and the
democracy to scare the nobles. One's when they want to swallow a
privilege, and the other's when they want to ring-fence their gains. How
is it Shrapnel doesn't expose the trick? He must see through it. I like
that letter of his. People is one of your Radical big words that
burst at a query. He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling,
Christopher Sly, Jack Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil.
Our clowns are the stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals.
They can't spell; they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their
legs. And I believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their
blood's up. Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing
the people. "And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one
of their songs. The word people, in England, is a dyspeptic agitator's
dream when he falls nodding over the red chapter of French history. Who
won the great liberties for England? My book says, the nobles. And who
made the great stand later?--the squires. What have the middlemen