enerable friend Bungay is affected," Shandon said,
slily looking up from his papers--"that's your true sort of test. I have
used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times,
and I never knew the Duke to fail."

The Captain then went on to confess, with much candour, that up to the
present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest
of their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in
the press by professional proctors and advocates. That time Shandon
professed to consider was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must
be their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave,
strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the
field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling advocates:
they must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from Whitehall;
"that's a dig at Bacon's people, Mr. Bungay," said Shandon, turning
round to the publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. "Hang
him, pitch into him, Capting," he said with exultation: and turning to
Warrington, wagged his dull head more vehemently than ever, and said,
"For a slashing article, sir, there's nobody like the Capting--no-obody
like him."

The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
journal, of which the principles were so-and-so. "These men are proud
of their order, and anxious to uphold it," cried out Captain Shandon,
flourishing his paper with a grin. "They are loyal to their Sovereign,
by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their Church,
where they would have their children worship, and for which their
forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what the
gentlemen of England--yes, the gentlemen of England (we'll have that in
large caps, Bungay, my boy) have made it--the greatest and freest in the
world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed which
secured our liberties at Runnymede--"

"What's that?" asked Mr. Bungay.

"An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt," Pen said, with
great gravity.

"It's the Habeas Corpus, Mr.