“For think not”—the Sergeant resumed when it died down—“think not, gentlemen, whatever the easily led vulgar may think, that sacrilegious hands can be laid on the Ark of the Constitution without injury to many other interests; without the shock being felt through all the various members of the State down to the lowest: without endangering all those multiform rights and privileges for which the Constitution is our guarantee! Let the advocates of this pernicious, this revolutionary Bill say what they will, they cannot deny that its effect will be to deprive you in Chippinge who, for nearly five centuries, have enjoyed the privilege of returning members to Parliament—of that privilege, with all”—here he glanced at the rich array of bottles that covered the board—“the amenities which it brings with it! And for whose benefit? For that of men no better qualified—nay, by practice and heredity less qualified—than yourselves. But, gentlemen, mark me, that is not all! That is but the beginning, and it may be the least part. That loss they cannot hide from you. That loss they do not attempt to hide from you. But they do hide from you,” he continued in his deepest and most tragic tone, “a fact to which the whole course of history is witness—that a policy of robbery once begun is rarely stayed, if it be stayed, until the victim is bare! Bare, gentlemen! Gentlemen, the freemen of this borough have of ancient right, conferred by an ancient sovereign——” “God bless him!” from Annibal, now somewhat drunk. “God bless him! Here’s his health!” The Sergeant paused an instant and looked round the table. Then more slowly, “Ay, God bless him!” he said. “God bless King Canute! But what—what if those grants of land—-I care not whether you call them chartered rights or vested interests—which you freemen enjoy of him—what if they do not enure? You have them,” with a penetrating glance from face to face, “but for how long, gentlemen, if this Bill pass? You are too clear-sighted to be blind to the peril! Too shrewd to think that you can part with one right, as old, as well vested, as perfectly secured—and keep the others undiminished? Gentlemen, if you are so blind, take warning! For wherever this anarchical, this dangerous, this revolutionary Bill——” “Hear! Hear! Hear!” from Vaughan’s neighbour, the Squire. “Wherever, I say, this Bill finds supporters—and I can well believe that in Birmingham and Sheffield, where they have all to gain and nothing to lose, it will find supporters, it should find none in Chippinge! Where we have all to lose and nothing to gain, and where no man but a fool or a rogue can in reason support it! Gentlemen, you are neither fools nor rogues——” “No! No! No! No!”