“I’ll tell you,” Everard replied, “they belong to any party that upsets the party above them. They belong to the GEORGE FOXE party, and my poultry-roosts are the mark they aim at. You shall have a glance at the manufacturing district some day. You shall see the machines they work with. You shall see the miserable lank-jawed half-stewed pantaloons they’ve managed to make of Englishmen there. My blood’s past boiling. They work young children in their factories from morning to night. Their manufactories are spreading like the webs of the devil to suck the blood of the country. In that district of theirs an epidemic levels men like a disease in sheep. Skeletons can’t make a stand. On the top of it all they sing Sunday tunes!” This behaviour of corn-law agitators and protectors of poachers was an hypocrisy too horrible for comment. Everard sipped claret. Nevil lashed his head for the clear idea which objurgation insists upon implanting, but batters to pieces in the act. “Manchester’s the belly of this country!” Everard continued. “So long as Manchester flourishes, we’re a country governed and led by the belly. The head and the legs of the country are sound still; I don’t guarantee it for long, but the middle’s rapacious and corrupt. Take it on a question of foreign affairs, it’s an alderman after a feast. Bring it upon home politics, you meet a wolf.” The faithful Whig veteran spoke with jolly admiration of the speech of a famous Tory chief. “That was the way to talk to them! Denounce them traitors! Up whip, and set the ruffians capering! Hit them facers! Our men are always for the too-clever trick. They pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss of a sprout or two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good enough when you’re dealing with fragments. It’s a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don’t want you to go into Parliament ever. You’re a fitter man out of it; but if ever you’re bitten—and it’s the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don’t follow a flag, be independent, keep a free vote; remember how I’ve been tied, and hold foot against Manchester. Do it blindfold; you don’t want counselling, you’re sure to be right. I’ll lay you a blood-brood mare to a cabstand skeleton, you’ll have an easy conscience and deserve the thanks of the country.”