George Eliot: Middlemarch

BOOK V. THE DEAD HAND. 46. CHAPTER XLVI. (continued)

Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--

"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw: they only pick the more holes in his coat in the `Trumpet.'"

"No matter; those who read the `Pioneer' don't read the `Trumpet,'" said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about. "Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a witches' brewing with a vengeance then--`Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was going to take."

"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment."

"There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members."

"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word in a curt tone.

"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on his estate that he never would have done but for this Parliamentary bite."

"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous decision. "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital. Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives him."

"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will. "He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man-- they only want a vote."

"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up a measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a part of the very disease that wants curing."