 would fain have shod them, being
needy; but it was not the design of Providence that they should so come as he in
his blindness would have had them. Admitting this he wished for nothing.
    The battle with Carpendike lasted three-quarters of an hour, during which he
was chiefly and most effectively silent. Carpendike would not vote for a man
that proposed to open museums on the Sabbath day. The striking simile of the
thin end of the wedge was recurred to by him for a damning illustration. Captain
Beauchamp might be honest in putting his mind on most questions in his address,
when there was no demand upon him to do it; but honesty was no antidote to
impiety. Thus Carpendike.
    As to Sunday museuming being an antidote to the pothouse - no. For the
people knew the frequenting of the pothouse to be a vice; it was a temptation of
Satan that often in overcoming them was the cause of their flying back to grace:
whereas museums and picture galleries were insidious attractions cloaked by the
name of virtue, whereby they were allured to abandon worship.
    Beauchamp flew at this young monster of unreason: »But the people are not
worshipping; they are idling and sotting, and if you carry your despotism
farther still, and shut them out of every shop on Sundays, do you suppose you
promote the spirit of worship? If you don't revolt them you unman them, and I
warn you we can't afford to destroy what manhood remains to us in England. Look
at the facts.«
    He flung the facts at Carpendike with the natural exaggeration of them which
eloquence produces, rather, as a rule, to assure itself in passing of the
overwhelming justice of the cause it pleads than to deceive the adversary.
Brewers' beer and publicans' beer, wife-beatings, the homes and the blood of the
people, were matters reviewed to the confusion of Sabbatarians.
    Carpendike listened with a bent head, upraised eyes, and brows wrinkling far
on to his poll: a picture of a mind entrenched beyond the potentialities of
mortal assault. He signified that he had spoken. Indeed Beauchamp's reply was
vain to one whose argument was that he considered the people nearer to holiness
in the indulging of an evil propensity than in satisfying a harmless curiosity
and getting a recreation. The Sabbath claimed them; if they were disobedient,
Sin ultimately might scourge them back to the fold, but never if they were
permitted to regard themselves as innocent in their backsliding and
rebelliousness.
    Such language was quite new to Beauchamp. The parsons he had spoken to were
of one voice in
