a declaration of a universal public right, to which
all States must submit.'

'Immorality brings its punishment, be sure of that. Some day we shall
have enough of China. As to the Rock, I know the argument; I may be
wrong. I've had the habit of regarding it as necessary to our naval
supremacy.'

'Come! there we agree.'

'I'm not so certain.'

'The counter-argument, I call treason.'

'Well,' said Beauchamp, 'there's a broad policy, and a narrow. There's
the Spanish view of the matter--if you are for peace and harmony and
disarmament.'

'I'm not.'

'Then strengthen your forces.'

'Not a bit of it!'

'Then bully the feeble and truckle to the strong; consent to be hated
till you have to stand your ground.'

'Talk!'

'It seems to me logical.'

'That's the French notion--c'est lodgique!'

Tuckham's pronunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him
passingly.

'By the way,' said Colonel Halkett, 'there are lots of horrors in the
paper to-day; wife kickings, and starvations--oh, dear me! and the murder
of a woman: two columns to that.'

'That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!' said Tuckham, rather by way
of a joke than a challenge.

Beauchamp accepted it as a challenge. Much to the benevolent amusement of
Mr. Austin and Colonel Halkett, he charged the responsibility of every
crime committed in the country, and every condition of misery, upon the
party which declined to move in advance, and which therefore apologized
for the perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, injustice, and foul
dealing.

'Stick to your laws and systems and institutions, and so long as you
won't stir to amend them, I hold you accountable for that long newspaper
list daily.'

He said this with a visible fire of conviction.

Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement.

He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: 'Madness can't go farther!'

'There's an idea in it,' said Mr. Austin.

'It's an idea foaming at the mouth, then.'

'Perhaps it has no worse fault than that of not marching parallel with
the truth,' said Mr. Austin, smiling. 'The party accusing in those terms
. . . what do you say, Captain Beauchamp?--supposing us to be pleading
before a tribunal?'

Beauchamp admitted as much as that he had made the case gigantic, though
he stuck to his charge against the Tory party. And moreover: the
Tories-and the old Whigs, now Liberals, ranked under the heading of
Tories--those Tories possessing an