 speaking respectfully. Prices, I'll admit, are what nobody can know the
merits of; and the sudden falls after you've bought in currants, which are a
goods that will not keep - I've never myself seen into the ins and outs there;
which is a rebuke to human pride. But as to one family, there's debtor and
creditor, I hope; they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote for
things staying as they are. Few men have less need to cry for change than I
have, personally speaking - that is, for self and family. I am not one of those
who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in parish and private
business, and noways in respect of your honourable self and custom, which you
was good enough to say you would not withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while
the article sent in was satisfactory.«
    After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife that he
had been rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he didn't mind so much
now about going to the poll.
    Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to
Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to persuade himself that he had no
concern with any canvassing except the purely argumentative sort, and that he
worked no meaner engine than knowledge. Mr. Brooke, necessarily, had his agents,
who understood the nature of the Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting
his ignorance on the side of the Bill - which were remarkably similar to the
means of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped his ears.
Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and
apparel, could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes.
There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty business; and
Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr. Brooke through would be
quite innocent.
    But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the majority
on the right side was very doubtful to him. He had written out various speeches
and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind,
if it had the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop,
run away in search of it, and not easily come back again. To collect documents
is one mode of serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document
is another. No! the only way
