’That was the way to talk to them!  Denounce them traitors!  Up whip, and set the ruffians capering!  Hit them facers!  Our men are always for the too-clever trick.  They pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss of a sprout or two thinned Manchester!  Your policy of absorption is good enough when you’re dealing with fragments.  It’s a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass.  You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger.  I don’t want you to go into Parliament ever.  You’re a fitter man out of it; but if ever you’re bitten—­and it’s the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—­don’t follow a flag, be independent, keep a free vote; remember how I’ve been tied, and hold foot against Manchester.  Do it blindfold; you don’t want counselling, you’re sure to be right.  I’ll lay you a blood-brood mare to a cabstand skeleton, you’ll have an easy conscience and deserve the thanks of the country.’

Nevil listened gravely.  The soundness of the head and legs of the country he took for granted.  The inflated state of the unchivalrous middle, denominated Manchester, terrified him.  Could it be true that England was betraying signs of decay? and signs how ignoble!  Half-a-dozen crescent lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the world, and the reflection for one ready to die upholding her was that the portrait was no caricature.  Such an emblematic presentation of the land of his filial affection haunted him with hideous mockeries.  Surely the foreigner hearing our boasts of her must compare us to showmen bawling the attractions of a Fat Lady at a fair!

Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it.  Everard exulted to hear his young echo attack the cotton-spinners.  But Nevil was for a plan, a system, immediate action; the descending among the people, and taking an initiative, leading them, insisting on their following, not standing aloof and shrugging.

‘We lead them in war,’ said he; ’why not in peace?  There’s a front for peace as well as war, and that’s our place rightly.  We’re pushed aside; why, it seems to me we’re treated like old-fashioned ornaments!  The fault must be ours.  Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as blazing fireworks over your own defeat.  Back we have to go! that’s the point, sir.  And as for jeering the cotton-spinners, I can’t while they’ve the lead of us.  We let them have it!  And we have thrice the stake in the country.  I don’t mean properties and titles.’

‘Deuce you don’t,’ said his uncle.

’I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties.  As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them.’