’Captain Beauchamp considers that the political change coming over the minds of the manufacturers is due to the large fortunes they have made,’ said Miss Halkett, maliciously associating a Radical prophet with him.

He was unaffected by it, and continued:  ’Property is ballast as well as treasure.  I call property funded good sense.  I would give it every privilege.  If we are to speak of patriotism, I say the possession of property guarantees it.  I maintain that the lead of men of property is in most cases sure to be the safe one.’

‘I think so,’ Colonel Halkett interposed, and he spoke as a man of property.

Mr. Tuckham grew fervent in his allusions to our wealth and our commerce.  Having won the race and gained the prize, shall we let it slip out of our grasp?  Upon this topic his voice descended to tones of priestlike awe:  for are we not the envy of the world?  Our wealth is countless, fabulous.  It may well inspire veneration.  And we have won it with our hands, thanks (he implied it so) to our religion.  We are rich in money and industry, in those two things only, and the corruption of an energetic industry is constantly threatened by the profusion of wealth giving it employment.  This being the case, either your Radicals do not know the first conditions of human nature, or they do; and if they do they are traitors, and the Liberals opening the gates to them are fools:  and some are knaves.  We perish as a Great Power if we cease to look sharp ahead, hold firm together, and make the utmost of what we possess.  The word for the performance of those duties is Toryism:  a word with an older flavour than Conservatism, and Mr. Tuckham preferred it.  By all means let workmen be free men but a man must earn his freedom daily, or he will become a slave in some form or another:  and the way to earn it is by work and obedience to right direction.  In a country like ours, open on all sides to the competition of intelligence and strength, with a Press that is the voice of all parties and of every interest; in a country offering to your investments three and a half and more per cent., secure as the firmament!

He perceived an amazed expression on Miss Halkett’s countenance; and ‘Ay,’ said he, ’that means the certainty of food to millions of mouths, and comforts, if not luxuries, to half the population.  A safe percentage on savings is the basis of civilization.’

But he had bruised his eloquence, for though you may start a sermon from stones to hit the stars, he must be a practised orator who shall descend out of the abstract to take up a heavy lump of the concrete without unseating himself, and he stammered and came to a flat ending:  ’In such a country—­well, I venture to say, we have a right to condemn in advance disturbers of the peace, and they must show very good cause indeed for not being summarily held—­to account for their conduct.’

The allocution was not delivered in the presence of an audience other than sympathetic, and Miss Halkett rightly guessed that it was intended to strike Captain Beauchamp by ricochet.  He puffed at the mention of Beauchamp’s name.  He had read a reported speech or two of Beauchamp’s, and shook his head over a quotation of the stuff, as though he would have sprung at him like a lion, but for his enrolment as a constable.