or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing.  He was a little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the borough—­willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing respectable people whose names were on his books.  He was accustomed to receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were many of Pinkerton’s committee whose opinions had a great weight of grocery on their side.  Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not too “clever in his intellects,” was the more likely to forgive a grocer who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his back parlor.

“As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light,” he said, rattling the small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably.  “Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more?  I put the question fictiously, knowing what must be the answer.  Very well, sir.  I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when gentlemen come to me and say, `Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere:  when I sugar my liquor I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining tradesmen of the right color.’  Those very words have been spoken to me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting.  I don’t mean by your honorable self, Mr. Brooke.”

“No, no, no—­that’s narrow, you know.  Until my butler complains to me of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey,” said Mr. Brooke, soothingly, “until I hear that you send bad sugars, spices—­that sort of thing—­ I shall never order him to go elsewhere.”

“Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged,” said Mr. Mawmsey, feeling that politics were clearing up a little.  “There would be some pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner.”

“Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put yourself on our side.  This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by—­ a thoroughly popular measure—­a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come first before the rest can follow.  I quite agree with you that you’ve got to look at the thing in a family light:  but public spirit, now.  We’re all one family, you know—­ it’s all one cupboard.  Such a thing as a vote, now:  why, it may help to make men’s fortunes at the Cape—­there’s no knowing what may be the effect of a vote,” Mr. Brooke ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it still enjoyable.  But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.