“Why not?  Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing it,” said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when he had not thought of a question beforehand.

“That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to carry it.  You go against rottenness, 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 special end with others whose motives and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure of his personal independence, and that he is not working for his private interest—­either place or money.”