When Samuel had received a thousand sheets with twenty thousand signatures, he set his heart on twenty-five thousand signatures.  And he also announced his firm intention of accompanying young Lawton to London with the petition.  The petition had, in fact, become one of the most remarkable petitions of modern times.  So the Signal said.  The Signal gave a daily account of its progress, and its progress was astonishing.  In certain streets every householder had signed it.  The first sheets had been reserved for the signatures of members of Parliament, ministers of religion, civic dignitaries, justices of the peace, etc.  These sheets were nobly filled.  The aged Rector of Bursley signed first of all; after him the Mayor of Bursley, as was right; then sundry M.P.’s.

Samuel emerged from the drawing-room.  He went into the parlour, and, later, into the shop; and no evil consequence followed.  His cough was nearly, but not quite, cured.  The weather was extraordinarily mild for the season.  He repeated that he should go with the petition to London; and he went; Constance could not validly oppose the journey.  She, too, was a little intoxicated by the petition.  It weighed considerably over a hundredweight.  The crowning signature, that of the M.P. for Knype, was duly obtained in London, and Samuel’s one disappointment was that his hope of twenty-five thousand signatures had fallen short of realization—­ by only a few score.  The few score could have been got had not time urgently pressed.  He returned from London a man of mark, full of confidence; but his cough was worse again.

His confidence in the power of public opinion and the inherent virtue of justice might have proved to be well placed, had not the Home Secretary happened to be one of your humane officials.  The Marquis of Welwyn was celebrated through every stratum of the governing classes for his humane instincts, which were continually fighting against his sense of duty.  Unfortunately his sense of duty, which he had inherited from several centuries of ancestors, made havoc among his humane instincts on nearly every occasion of conflict.  It was reported that he suffered horribly in consequence.  Others also suffered, for he was never known to advise a remission of a sentence of flogging.  Certain capital sentences he had commuted, but he did not commute Daniel Povey’s.  He could not permit himself to be influenced by a wave of popular sentiment, and assuredly not by his own nephew’s signature.  He gave to the case the patient, remorseless examination which he gave to every case.  He spent a sleepless night in trying to discover a reason for yielding to his humane instincts, but without success.  As Judge Lindley remarked in his confidential report, the sole arguments in favour of Daniel were provocation and his previous high character; and these were no sort of an argument.  The provocation was utterly inadequate, and the previous high character was quite too ludicrously beside the point.  So once more the Marquis’s humane instincts were routed and he suffered horribly.