e:
had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way
at once. They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so
acted, and that the resistance had been successful against such of their
own form as had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained
thereby, but the ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once.
"Confoundedly coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind," was
the general feeling.

So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the Angel Gabriel were to
come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most
abominable and unrighteous vested interest, which this poor old world
groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years,
probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest,
but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They
wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the
papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver,
or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor
gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and righteous
causes which do not triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in
their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in
their lounging chairs, and having large balances at their bankers? But
you are brave, gallant boys, who hate easy-chairs, and have no balances
or bankers. You only want to have your heads set straight to take the
right side: so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable
ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man
or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or
blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If
you can't join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate
remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight
and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves;
and so think and speak of him tenderly.

So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of
young Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every one's hand
against them. It has been already told how they got to war with the
masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same.
They saw the praepostors cowed by or joining with the fifth, and
shirking their own duties; so they didn't respect them, and rendered no
willin