"It always seemed to me
that that must have worked so curiously."
"Prefer it?" said Lady Plowden. "A thousand times
yes! My husband made one of the best speeches in the
debate on it--one do I say?--first and last he must
have made a dozen of them. If anything could have kept
the House of Lords firm, in the face of the wretched
Radical outcry, it would have been those speeches.
He pointed out all the evils that would follow the change.
You might have called it prophetic--the way he foresaw
what would happen to Balder--or not Balder in particular,
of course, but that whole class of young gentlemen.
"As he said, you have only to ask yourself what kind
of people the lower classes naturally look up to and
obey and follow. Will they be ordered about by a man
simply because he knows Greek and Latin and Hebrew? Do
they respect the village schoolmaster, for example,
on account of his learning? Not in the very slightest! On
the contrary, they regard him with the greatest contempt.
The man they will serve is the man whose birth gives him
the right to command them, or else the man with money
in his pockets to make it worth their while. These two
are the only leaders they understand. And if that's true
here in England, in times of peace, among our own people,
how much truer must it be of our soldiers, away from England,
in a time of war?"
"But, mamma," the Hon.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129