
that, and so on. I agree with you that this is a peculiar occasion - the country
with a will of its own - political unions - that sort of thing - but we
sometimes cut with rather too sharp a knife, Ladislaw. These ten-pound
householders, now: why ten? Draw the line somewhere - yes: but why just at ten?
That's a difficult question, now, if you go into it.«
    »Of course it is,« said Will, impatiently. »But if you are to wait till we
get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a revolutionist, and then
Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy. As for trimming, this is not a time
for trimming.«
    Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared to him
a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval the wisdom of
his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn into using them with
much hopefulness. At this stage of affairs he was in excellent spirits, which
even supported him under large advances of money; for his powers of convincing
and persuading had not yet been tested by anything more difficult than a
chairman's speech introducing other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch
voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature,
and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing. He was a
little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief representative in
Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail trader, and naturally one of
the most doubtful voters in the borough - willing for his own part to supply an
equal quality of teas and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to
agree impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this
necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even if there
were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would be
the painful necessity at last of disappointing respectable people whose names
were on his books. He was accustomed to receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of
Tipton; but then, there were many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a
great weight of grocery on their side. Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as
not too »clever in his intellects,« was the more likely to forgive a grocer who
gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his back parlour.
    »As to Reform, sir, put
