political sermons of the Independent preacher, which, in
their way, were as pernicious sources of intoxication as the beerhouses. The
Dissenters, on their side, were not disposed to sacrifice the cause of truth and
freedom to a temporizing mildness of language; but they defended themselves from
the charge of religious indifference, and solemnly disclaimed any lax
expectations that Catholics were likely to be saved - urging, on the contrary,
that they were not too hopeful about Protestants, who adhered to a bloated and
worldly prelacy. Thus Treby Magna, which had lived quietly through the great
earthquakes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which had remained
unmoved by the Rights of Man, and saw little in Mr Cobbett's Weekly Register
except that he held eccentric views about potatoes, began at last to know the
higher pains of a dim political consciousness; and the development had been
greatly helped by the recent agitation about the Reform Bill. Tory, Whig, and
Radical did not perhaps become clearer in their definition of each other; but
the names seemed to acquire so strong a stamp of honour or infamy, that
definitions would only have weakened the impression. As to the short and easy
method of judging opinions by the personal character of those who held them, it
was liable to be much frustrated in Treby. It so happened in that particular
town that the Reformers were not all of them large-hearted patriots or ardent
lovers of justice; indeed, one of them, in the very midst of the agitation, was
detected in using unequal scales - a fact to which many Tories pointed with
disgust as showing plainly enough, without further argument, that the cry for a
change in the representative system was hollow trickery. Again, the Tories were
far from being all oppressors, disposed to grind down the working classes into
serfdom; and it was undeniable that the inspector at the tape manufactory, who
spoke with much eloquence on the extension of the suffrage, was a more
tyrannical personage than open-handed Mr Wace, whose chief political tenet was,
that it was all nonsense giving men votes when they had no stake in the country.
On the other hand, there were some Tories who gave themselves a great deal of
leisure to abuse hypocrites, Radicals, Dissenters, and atheism generally, but
whose inflamed faces, theistic swearing, and frankness in expressing a wish to
borrow, certainly did not mark them out strongly as holding opinions likely to
save society.
    The Reformers had triumphed: it was clear that the wheels were going whither
they were pulling, and they were in fine spirits for exertion. But if they were
pulling