 looked on, and seen the building razed and its owner slaughtered,
and never stirred a finger to save either.«
    »If Moore had behaved to his men from the beginning as a master ought to
behave, they never would have entertained their present feelings towards him.«
    »Easy for you to talk,« exclaimed Miss Keeldar, who was beginning to wax
warm in her tenant's cause: »you, whose family have lived at Briarmains for six
generations, to whose person the people have been accustomed for fifty years,
who know all their ways, prejudices, and preferences. Easy, indeed, for you to
act so as to avoid offending them; but Mr. Moore came a stranger into the
district: he came here poor and friendless, with nothing but his own energies to
back him; nothing but his honour, his talent, and his industry to make his way
for him. A monstrous crime indeed that, under such circumstances, he could not
popularize his naturally grave, quiet manners, all at once: could not be
jocular, and free, and cordial with a strange peasantry, as you are with your
fellow-townsmen! An unpardonable transgression, that when he introduced
improvements he did not go about the business in quite the most politic way; did
not graduate his changes as delicately as a rich capitalist might have done! For
errors of this sort is he to be the victim of mob-outrage? Is he to be denied
even the privilege of defending himself? Are those who have the hearts of men in
their breasts (and Mr. Helstone - say what you will of him - has such a heart)
to be reviled like malefactors because they stand by him - because they venture
to espouse the cause of one against two hundred?«
    »Come - come now - be cool,« said Mr. Yorke, smiling at the earnestness with
which Shirley multiplied her rapid questions.
    »Cool! Must I listen coolly to downright nonsense - to dangerous nonsense?
No. I like you very well, Mr. Yorke, as you know; but I thoroughly dislike some
of your principles. All that cant - excuse me, but I repeat the word - all that
cant about soldiers and parsons is most offensive in my ears. All ridiculous,
irrational crying up of one class, whether the same be aristocrat or democrat -
all howling down of another class, whether clerical or military - all exacting
injustice to individuals, whether monarch or mendicant - is really sickening to
me: all arraying of ranks against ranks, all party hatreds, all tyrannies
disguised as
