champion of Dissent and
Liberalism, his case would have been one for gold, silver, and copper
subscriptions, in order to procure the best defence; sermons might have been
preached on him, and his name might have floated on flags from Newcastle to
Dorchester. But there seemed to be no edification in what had befallen Felix.
The riot at Treby, turn it which way you would, as Mr Muscat observed, was no
great credit to Liberalism; and what Mr Lyon had to testify as to Felix Holt's
conduct in the matter of the Sproxton men, only made it clear that the defence
of Felix was the accusation of his party. The whole affair, Mr Nuttwood said,
was dark and inscrutable, and seemed not to be one in which the interference of
God's servants would tend to give the glory where the glory was due. That a
candidate for whom the richer church members had all voted should have his name
associated with the encouragement of drunkenness, riot, and plunder, was an
occasion for the enemy to blaspheme; and it was not clear how the enemy's mouth
would be stopped by exertions in favour of a rash young man, whose interference
had made things worse instead of better. Mr Lyon was warned lest his human
partialities should blind him to the interests of truth; it was God's cause that
was endangered in this matter.
    The little minister's soul was bruised; he himself was keenly alive to the
complication of public and private regards in this affair, and suffered a good
deal at the thought of Tory triumph in the demonstration that, excepting the
attack on the Seven Stars, which called itself a Whig house, all damage to
property had been borne by Tories. He cared intensely for his opinions, and
would have liked events to speak for them in a sort of picture-writing that
everybody could understand. The enthusiasms of the world are not to be
stimulated by a commentary in small and subtle characters which alone can tell
the whole truth; and the picture-writing in Felix Holt's troubles was of an
entirely puzzling kind: if he were a martyr, neither side wanted to claim him.
Yet the minister, as we have seen, found in his Christian faith a reason for
clinging the more to one who had not a large party to back him. That little
man's heart was heroic: he was not one of those Liberals who make their anxiety
for the cause of Liberalism a plea for cowardly desertion.
    Besides himself, he believed there was no one who could bear testimony to
the remonstrances of Felix concerning