Charles Dickens: Barnaby Rudge

Chapter 35 (continued)

'You do not doubt it, my lord?' said the secretary.

'No--No,' returned his lord. 'No. Why should I? I suppose it would be decidedly irreligious to doubt it--wouldn't it, Gashford? Though there certainly were,' he added, without waiting for an answer, 'some plaguy ill-looking characters among them.'

'When you warmed,' said the secretary, looking sharply at the other's downcast eyes, which brightened slowly as he spoke; 'when you warmed into that noble outbreak; when you told them that you were never of the lukewarm or the timid tribe, and bade them take heed that they were prepared to follow one who would lead them on, though to the very death; when you spoke of a hundred and twenty thousand men across the Scottish border who would take their own redress at any time, if it were not conceded; when you cried "Perish the Pope and all his base adherents; the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen have hearts and hands"--and waved your own and touched your sword; and when they cried "No Popery!" and you cried "No; not even if we wade in blood," and they threw up their hats and cried "Hurrah! not even if we wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists-- Vengeance on their heads:" when this was said and done, and a word from you, my lord, could raise or still the tumult--ah! then I felt what greatness was indeed, and thought, When was there ever power like this of Lord George Gordon's!'

'It's a great power. You're right. It is a great power!' he cried with sparkling eyes. 'But--dear Gashford--did I really say all that?'

'And how much more!' cried the secretary, looking upwards. 'Ah! how much more!'

'And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand men in Scotland, did I!' he asked with evident delight. 'That was bold.'

'Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.'

'Certainly. So is religion. She's bold, Gashford?'