irit of disaffection against constituted
authorities he regarded as the most promising sign of the times; the
masters, he allowed, were truly aggrieved, but their main grievances had
been heaped on them by a "corrupt, base, and bloody" government (these
were Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh,
mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the
country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated
perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had
brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously
oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"--the
originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever
public men did--that hung a millstone about England's neck.

"But where was the use of talking?" he demanded. "What chance was there
of reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden,
peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled
debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense as
hereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench of
bishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established
church was endured and venerated; where a standing army was maintained,
and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the
fat of the land?"

Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel-hat, observed in
reply, "that in the course of his life he had met with two or three
instances where sentiments of this sort had been very bravely maintained
so long as health, strength, and worldly prosperity had been the allies
of him who professed them; but there came a time," he said, "to all men,
'when the keepers of the house should tremble; when they should be
afraid of that which is high, and fear should be in the way;' and that
time was the test of the advocate of anarchy and rebellion, the enemy of
religion and order. Ere now," he affirmed, "he had been called upon to
read those prayers our church has provided for the sick by the miserable
dying-bed of one of her most rancorous foes; he had seen such a one
stricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a place for repentance,
and unable to find any, though he sought it carefully with tears. He
must forewarn Mr. Yorke that blasphemy against God and the king was a
deadly sin, and that there was such a thing as 'judgment to come.'"

Mr. Yorke "believed fully that there w