ortable clergy hand them over to men on the
models of Irish pastors, who will succour, console, enfold, champion
them? what if, when they have learnt to use their majority, sick of
deceptions and the endless pulling of interests, they raise ONE
representative to force the current of action with an authority as
little fictitious as their preponderance of numbers? The despot and
the priest! There I see our danger, Beauchamp. You and I and some
dozen labour to tie and knot them to manliness. We are few; they
are many and weak. Rome offers them real comfort in return for
their mites in coin, and--poor souls! mites in conscience, many of
them. A Tyrant offers them to be directly their friend. Ask,
Beauchamp, why they should not have comfort for pay as well as the
big round--"'

Captain Baskelett stopped and laid the letter out for Colonel Halkett to
read an unmentionable word, shamelessly marked by Nevil's pencil:

"--belly-class!" Ask, too, whether the comfort they wish for is not
approaching divine compared with the stagnant fleshliness of that
fat shopkeeper's Comfort.

'"Warn the people of this. Ay, warn the clergy. It is not only the
poor that are caught by ranters. Endeavour to make those
accommodating shepherds understand that they stand a chance of
losing rich as well as poor! It should awaken them. The helpless
poor and the uneasy rich are alike open to the seductions of Romish
priests and intoxicated ranters. I say so it will be if that band
of forty thousand go on slumbering and nodding. They walk in a
dream. The flesh is a dream. The soul only is life."

'Now for you, colonel.

'"No extension of the army--no! A thousand times no. Let India go,
then! Good for India that we hold India? Ay, good: but not at such
a cost as an extra tax, or compulsory service of our working man.
If India is to be held for the good of India, throw open India to
the civilized nations, that they help us in a task that overstrains
us. At present India means utter perversion of the policy of
England. Adrift India! rather than England red-coated. We dissent,
Beauchamp! For by-and-by."

'That is,' Captain Baskelett explained, 'by-and-by Shrapnel will have
old Nevil fast enough.'

'Is there more of it?' said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead for
coolness.

'The impudence of this dog in presuming to talk about India!--eh,
colonel? Only