ottenness, and there is nothing more
thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured
by a political hocus-pocus."

"That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere,
and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never
be reformed without this particular reform to begin with. Look what
Stanley said the other day--that the House had been tinkering long
enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that
voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been
sold wholesale. Wait for wisdom and conscience in public
agents--fiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust to is the
massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work
is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my text--which side is
injured? I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous
upholder of the wrong."

"That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging,
Ladislaw. When I say, I go in for the dose that cures, it doesn't
follow that I go in for opium in a given case of gout."

"I am not begging the question we are upon--whether we are to try for
nothing till we find immaculate men to work with. Should you go on
that plan? If there were one man who would carry you a medical reform
and another who would oppose it, should you inquire which had the
better motives or even the better brains?"

"Oh, of course," said Lydgate, seeing himself checkmated by a move
which he had often used himself, "if one did not work with such men as
are at hand, things must come to a dead-lock. Suppose the worst opinion
in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that would not make it
less true that he has the sense and the resolution to do what I think
ought to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is
the only ground on which I go with him," Lydgate added rather proudly,
bearing in mind Mr. Farebrother's remarks. "He is nothing to me
otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal ground--I would keep
clear of that."

"Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?" said Will
Ladislaw, nettled, and turning sharp round. For the first time he felt
offended with Lydgate; not the less so, perhaps, because he would have
declined any close inquiry into the growth of his relation to Mr.
Brooke.

"Not at all," said Lydgate, "I was simply explaining my own action. I
meant that a man may work for a