"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the
opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring
another member out of the bag at the right moment."
"There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members."
"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word
in a curt tone.
"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and
shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the
neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good
things on his estate that he never would have done but for this
Parliamentary bite."
"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous
decision. "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see
that at the Hospital. Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives
him."
"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.
"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their
mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--they only
want a vote."
"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up a
measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a
part of the very disease that wants curing."
"Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land
without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when
he had not thought of a question beforehand.
"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of
hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it
whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to
carry it. You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more
thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured
by a political hocus-pocus."
"That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere,
and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never
be reformed without this particular reform to begin with. Look what
Stanley said the other day--that the House had been tinkering long
enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that
voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been
sold wholesale. Wait for wisdom and conscience in public
agents--fiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust to is the
massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work
is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my text--which side is
injured? I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous
upholder of the wrong."