CHAPTER IV.
"Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not
represented in parliament or out of it. The 'County Mercury' has
ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the
whole shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the
community!"
This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by
Mr. and Mrs. Caxton to the grandees of the neighborhood, and uttered by
no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the
quarter-sessions.
I confess that I (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to
dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing
years and my promise to abstain from the decanters),--I confess, I say,
that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in
the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a
warhorse at the sound of the drum and rush so incontinently across the
interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep
and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You
could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a
bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy
illustration, you could not say of him, as Saint Gregory saith of the
streams of Jordan, "A lamb could wade easily through that ford."
"Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of--" here my uncle
stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear; "What are his
politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down
from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal
intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!"
My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, as he was apt to
do when doubtful; the rest of the company--a silent set-looked up.
"Fellow-creatures!" said Mr. Rollick,--"fellow-fiddlesticks!"
Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously,
--"I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then
suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally
represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said that
the "'County Mercury' ought to be hanged," he was one of those
politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a
Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on,
intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all
the "rubbish" (1) subsequently shot into Covent Garden and Hall of
Commerce.
"Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For
what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What
is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the
land?"
"Professes!" cried Squire Rollick,--"it is the prop of the land; and as
for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the 'Mercury'--"
"Bought up the 'Mercury,' have they, the villains?" cried Uncle Jack,
interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent. "Depend upon
it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up,--which must
be exposed manfully. Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural
interest which they desire to ruin; which they declare to be so bloated;
which they call 'a Vampire!'--they the true blood-suckers, the venomous
millocrats? Fellow-creatures, Sir! I may well call distressed fellow-
creatures the members of that much-suffering class of which you yourself
are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for
relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say,--of a nominal
L5,000 a-year,--compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-
hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates,
support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions
of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down
by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger
children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model
farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five
pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect
his rights,--plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-
stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that
necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-
creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great estate."
My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter, for by
the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly.
Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving
exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor-rates, tithes, county-
rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack,
and said, civilly: "There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Mr.
Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it does,
I would not give that for Old England!" and Mr. Rollick snapped his
finger and thumb. "But what is to be done,--done for the county?
There's the rub."
"I was just coming to that," quoth Uncle Jack. "You say that you have
not a county paper that upholds your cause and denounces your enemies."
"Not since the Whigs bought the '--shire Mercury.'"
"Why, good heavens! Mr. Rollick, how can you suppose that you will have
justice done you if at this time of day you neglect the Press? The
Press, sir--there it is--air we breathe! What you want is a great
national--no, not a national--A Provincial proprietary weekly journal,
supported liberally and steadily by that mighty party whose very
existence is at stake. Without such a paper you are gone, you are
dead,--extinct, defunct, buried alive; with such a paper,--well
conducted, well edited by a man of the world, of education, of practical
experience in agriculture and human nature, mines, corn, manure,
insurances, Acts of Parliament, cattle-shows, the state of parties, and
the best interests of society,--with such a man and such a paper, you
will carry all before you. But it must be done by subscription, by
association, by co-operation,--by a Grand Provincial Benevolent
Agricultural Anti-innovating Society."
"Egad, sir, you are right!" said Mr. Rollick, slapping his thigh; "and
I'll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to-morrow. His eldest son ought
to carry the county."
"And he will, if you encourage the Press and set up a journal," said
Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then gently stretching them out and
drawing them gradually together, as if he were already enclosing in that
airy circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association.
All happiness dwells more in the hope than the possession; and at that
moment I dare be sworn that Uncle Jack felt a livelier rapture circum
proecordia, warming his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole
frame of five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva Moneta,
than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession of King
Croesus's privy purse.
"I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory," said I to my father the next day.
My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his eyes. "Are you a
Tory or a Whig, papa?"
"Um!" said my father, "there's a great deal to be said on both sides of
the question. You see, my boy, that Mrs. Primmins has a great many
moulds for our butter-pats: sometimes they come up with a crown on them,
sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. It is all very well
for those who dish up the butter to print it according to their taste or
in proof of their abilities; it is enough for us to butter our bread,
say grace, and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?"
"Not a bit, sir."
"Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then," said my father.
"And now let us feed the duck. Where's your uncle?"
"He has borrowed Mr. Squills's mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick
to the great lord they were talking of."
"Oho!" said my father; "brother Jack is going to print his butter!"
And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so well on this occasion, and set
before the Lord-Lieutenant, with whom he had a personal interview, so
fine a prospectus and so nice a calculation that before my holidays were
over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the county town,
with private apartments over it, and a salary of L500 a-year, for
advocating the cause of his distressed fellow-creatures, including
noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the
New Proprietary Agricultural Anti-Innovating-Shire Weekly Gazette. At
the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown,
supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto, "Pro rege et grege."
And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats of butter.
(1) "We talked sad rubbish when we first began," says Mr. Cobden, in
one of his speeches.
