omething
after all in what he said about Home Rule for every home.
Yes, there is something, when all's said and done, in the High Court
of Beacon. It is really true that human beings might often get
some sort of domestic justice where just now they can only get
legal injustice--oh, I am a lawyer too, and I know that as well.
It is true that there's too much official and indirect power.
Often and often the thing a whole nation can't settle is just the thing
a family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined
and sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed.
Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they
only wanted a week at Brighton. There IS something in Smith's
notion of domestic self-government; and I propose that we put it
into practice. You have the prisoner; you have the documents.
Come, we are a company of free, white, Christian people,
such as might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island.
Let us do this thing ourselves. Let us go into that house there
and sit down and find out with our own eyes and ears whether this
thing is true or not; whether this Smith is a man or a monster.
If we can't do a little thing like that, what right have we to put
crosses on ballot papers?"

Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance; and Warner, who was no fool,
saw in that glance that Moon was gaining ground. The motives that led
Arthur to think of surrender were indeed very different from those
which affected Dr. Cyrus Pym. All Arthur's instincts were on the side
of privacy and polite settlement; he was very English and would often
endure wrongs rather than right them by scenes and serious rhetoric.
To play at once the buffoon and the knight-errant, like his Irish friend,
would have been absolute torture to him; but even the semi-official
part he had played that afternoon was very painful. He was not likely
to be reluctant if any one could convince him that his duty was to let
sleeping dogs lie.

On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in which things are
possible that seem crazy to the English. Regulations and authorities exactly
like one of Innocent's pranks or one of Michael's satires really exist,
propped by placid policemen and imposed on bustling business men.
Pym knew whole States which are vast and yet secret and fanciful;
each is as big as a nation yet as private as a lost village, and as
unexpected as an apple-pie bed. States where no