Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/219

 his fall on London Bridge chiefly because it led to an unpleasant altercation with a member of the mob.

"* * * he found that enormous beast comprehensible only when it applauded him; and besides, he wished it warmly well; all that was good for it; plentiful dinners, country excursions, stout menagerie bars, music, a dance, and to bed; he was for patting, stroking, petting the mob, for tossing it sops, never for irritating it to show an eye-tooth, much less for causing it to exhibit the grinders."

Everard Romfrey, of sterner stuff, sees the advantage of tempering mercy with justice:

"To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and of a man's right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think the country poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure of justice. The three conjoined Estates were therefore his head gamekeepers; their duty was to back him against the poacher, if they would not see the country tumble. * * * No tenants were forced to take his farms. He dragged no one by the collar. He gave them liberty to go to Australia, Canada, the Americas, if they liked. * * * Still there were grumbling tenants. He swarmed with game, and though he was liberal, his hares and his birds were immensely destructive: computation could not fix the damage done by them. Probably the farmers expected them not to eat. 'There are two parties to a bargain,' said Everard, 'and one gets the worst of it. But if he was never obliged to make it, where's his right to complain?' Men of sense rarely obtain satisfactory answers; they are provoked to despise their kind."

He returns to the argument, deepened in unavoidable pessimism: