"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently. "But if you are to wait

till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a

revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy. As

for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared

to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval

the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn

into using them with much hopefulness. At this stage of affairs he was

in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances of

money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been

tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing

other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he

came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it

was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing. He was a

little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief

representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail

trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the

borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas

and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree

impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this

necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even

if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand,

there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing

respectable people whose names were on his books. He was accustomed to

receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were

many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of

grocery on their side. Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not

too "clever in his intellects," was the more likely to forgive a grocer

who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his

back parlor.

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the

small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably. "Will it support Mrs.

Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more? I

put the question _fictiously_, knowing what must be the answer. Very

well, sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when

gentlemen come to me and say, 'Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote

against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor

I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining

tradesmen of the right color.' Those very words have been spoken to

me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting. I don't mean by

your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."




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