“I wish you would favour us with your point of view, Mr. Carvel,” said he; “for, upon my soul, I know little about the subject.”

“You know little about the subject, and you in Parliament!”

I cried.

This started them all to laughing.  Why, I did not then understand.  But I was angry enough.

“Come, let’s have it!” said he.

They drew their chairs closer, some wearing that smile of superiority which to us is the Englishman’s most maddening trait.  I did not stop to think twice, or to remember that I was pitted against the greatest debater in all England.  I was to speak that of which I was full, and the heart’s argument needs no logic to defend it.  If it were my last word, I would pronounce it.

I began by telling them that the Americans had paid their share of the French war, in blood and money, twice over.  And I had the figures in my memory.  Mr. Fox interrupted.  For ten minutes at a space he spoke, and in all my life I have never talked to a man who had the English of King James’s Bible, of Shakespeare, and Milton so wholly at his command.  And his knowledge of history, his classical citations, confounded me.  I forgot myself in wondering how one who had lived so fast had acquired such learning.  Afterward, when I tried to recall what he said, I laughed at his surprising ignorance of the question at issue, and wondered where my wits could have gone that I allowed myself to be dazzled and turned aside at every corner.  As his speech came faster he twisted fact into fiction and fiction into fact, until I must needs close my mind and bolt the shutters of it, or he had betrayed me into confessing the right of Parliament to quarter troops among us.  Though my head swam, I clung doggedly to my text.  And that was my salvation.  He grew more excited, and they applauded him.  In truth, I myself felt near to clapping.  And then, as I stared him in the eye, marvelling how a man of such vast power and ability could stand for such rotten practices, the thought came to me (I know not whence) of Saint Paul the Apostle.

“Mr. Fox,” I said, when he had paused, “before God, do you believe what you are saying?”

I saw them smiling at my earnestness and simplicity.  Fox seemed surprised, and laughed evasively,—­not heartily as was his wont.

“My dear Mr. Carvel,” he said, glancing around the circle, political principles are not to be swallowed like religion, but taken rather like medicine, experimentally.  If they agree with you, very good.  If not, drop them and try others.  We are always ready to listen to remedies, here.”

“Ay, if they agree with you!” I exclaimed.  “But food for one is poison for another.  Do you know what you are doing?  You are pushing home injustice and tyranny to the millions, for the benefit of the thousands.  For is it not true, gentlemen, that the great masses of England are against the measures you impose upon us?  Their fight is our fight.  They are no longer represented in Parliament; we have never been.  Taxation without representation is true of your rotten boroughs as well as of your vast colonies.  You are helping the King to crush freedom abroad in order that he may the more easily break it at home.  You are committing a crime.