Sybil, Or, The Two Nations. Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli

“but still, at the same time, the powder and shot—”

      “Are essential,” said Lady Marney, “I know it, in these corrupt days: but Marney will of course supply those. It is the least he can do: regaining the family influence, and letting us hold up our heads again. I shall write to him the moment I am justified,” said Lady Marney, “perhaps you will do so yourself, Charles.”

      “Why, considering I have not seen my brother for two years, and we did not part on the best possible terms—”

      “But that is all forgotten.”

      “By your good offices, dear mother, who are always doing good: and yet,” continued Egremont, after a moment’s pause, “I am not disposed to write to Marney, especially to ask a favour.”

      “Well, I will write,” said Lady Marney; “though I cannot admit it is any favour. Perhaps it would be better that you should see him first. I cannot understand why he keeps so at the Abbey. I am sure I found it a melancholy place enough in my time. I wish you had gone down there, Charles, if it had been only for a few days.”

      “Well I did not, my dear mother, and I cannot go now. I shall trust to you. But are you quite sure that the king is going to die?”

      “I repeat to you, it is certain,” replied Lady Marney, in a lowered voice, but a decided tone; “certain, certain, certain. My authority cannot be mistaken: but no consideration in the world must throw you off your guard at this moment; breathe not the shadow of what you know.”

      At this moment a servant entered and delivered a note to Lady Marney, who read it with an ironical smile. It was from Lady St. Julians, and ran thus:—

      “Most confidential.

       “My dearest Lady Marney,

       “It is a false report: he is ill, but not dangerously; the

      hay fever; he always has it; nothing more: I will tell my

       authority when we meet; I dare not write it. It will

      satisfy you. I am going on with my quadrille.

       “Most affectionately yours,

       “A. St. J.”

      “Poor woman! she is always wrong,” said Lady Marney throwing the note to Egremont. “Her quadrille will never take place, which is a pity, as it is to consist only of beauties and eldest sons. I suppose I must send her a line,” and she wrote:

      “My dearest Lady St. Julians,

       “How good of you to write to me, and send me such cheering

       news! I have no doubt you are right: you always are: I

      know he had the hay fever last year. How fortunate for your

       quadrille, and how charming it will be! Let me know if

      you hear anything further from your unmentionable quarter.

       “Ever your affectionate

       “C.M.”

Book 1 Chapter 5

       Table of Contents

      Lord Marney left several children; his heir was five years older than the next son Charles who at the period of his father’s death was at Christchurch and had just entered the last year of his minority. Attaining that age, he received the sum of fifteen thousand pounds, his portion, a third of which amount his expenditure had then already anticipated. Egremont had been brought up in the enjoyment of every comfort and every luxury that refinement could devise and wealth furnish. He was a favourite child. His parents emulated each other in pampering and indulging him. Every freak was pardoned, every whim was gratified. He might ride what horses he liked, and if he broke their knees, what in another would have been deemed a flagrant sin, was in him held only a proof of reckless spirit. If he were not a thoroughly selfish and altogether wilful person, but very much the reverse, it was not the fault of his parents, but rather the operation of a benignant nature that had bestowed on him a generous spirit and a tender heart, though accompanied with a dangerous susceptibility that made him the child and creature of impulse, and seemed to set at defiance even the course of time to engraft on his nature any quality of prudence. The tone of Eton during the days of Charles Egremont was not of the high character which at present distinguishes that community. It was the unforeseen eve of the great change, that, whatever was its purpose or have been its immediate results, at least gave the first shock to the pseudo-aristocracy of this country. Then all was blooming; sunshine and odour; not a breeze disturbing the meridian splendour. Then the world was not only made for a few, but a very few. One could almost tell upon one’s fingers the happy families who could do anything, and might have everything. A school-boy’s ideas of the Church then were fat-livings, and of the State, rotten-boroughs. To do nothing and get something, formed a boy’s ideal of a manly career. There was nothing in the lot, little in the temperament, of Charles Egremont, to make him an exception to the multitude. Gaily and securely he floated on the brilliant stream. Popular at school, idolized at home, the present had no cares, and the future secured him a family seat in Parliament the moment he entered life, and the inheritance of a glittering post at court in due time, as its legitimate consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed the principle of his existence. The contingency of a mitre, the certainty of rich preferment, would not reconcile him to the self-sacrifice which, to a certain degree, was required from a priest, even in those days of rampant Erastianism. He left the colonies as the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a profession being limited to a barrack in a London park, varied by visits to Windsor. But there was time enough to think of these things. He had to enjoy Oxford as he had enjoyed Eton. Here his allowance from his father was extravagant, though greatly increased by tithes from his mother’s pin-money. While he was pursuing his studies, hunting and boating, driving tandems, riding matches, tempering his energies in the crapulence of boyish banquets, and anticipating life, at the risk of expulsion, in a miserable mimicry of metropolitan dissipation, Dukism, that was supposed to be eternal, suddenly crashed.

      The Reform Act has not placed the administration of our affairs in abler hands than conducted them previously to the passing of the measure, for the most efficient members of the present cabinet with some very few exceptions, and those attended by peculiar circumstances, were ministers before the Reform Act was contemplated. Nor has that memorable statute created a Parliament of a higher reputation for public qualities, such as politic ability, and popular eloquence, and national consideration, than was furnished by the old scheme. On the contrary; one house of Parliament has been irremediably degraded into the decaying position of a mere court of registry, possessing great privileges, on condition that it never exercises them; while the other chamber that, at the first blush, and to the superficial, exhibits symptoms of almost unnatural vitality, engrossing in its orbit all the business of the country, assumes on a more studious inspection somewhat of the character of a select vestry, fulfilling municipal rather than imperial offices, and beleaguered by critical and clamorous millions, who cannot comprehend why a privileged and exclusive senate is required to perform functions which immediately concern all, which most personally comprehend, and which many in their civic spheres believe they could accomplish in a manner not less satisfactory, though certainly less ostentatious.

      But if it have not furnished us with abler administrators or a more illustrious senate, the Reform Act may have exercised on the country at large a beneficial influence. Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the public mind? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? Has it proposed to the people of England a higher test of national respect and confidence than the debasing qualification universally prevalent in this country since the fatal introduction of the system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a spirit of rapacious coveteousness, desecrating all the humanities of life, has been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a half, since the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of philosophic phrases, to propose