his fall on London Bridge chiefly because it led to an unpleasant altercation with a member of the mob.[1]
"* * * he found that enormous beast comprehensible
only when it applauded him; and besides, he wished it warmly
well; all that was good for it; plentiful dinners, country excursions,
stout menagerie bars, music, a dance, and to bed; he was
for patting, stroking, petting the mob, for tossing it sops, never
for irritating it to show an eye-tooth, much less for causing it
to exhibit the grinders."
Everard Romfrey, of sterner stuff, sees the advantage
of tempering mercy with justice:[2]
"To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and
of a man's right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think
the country poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure
of justice. The three conjoined Estates were therefore his
head gamekeepers; their duty was to back him against the
poacher, if they would not see the country tumble. * * * No
tenants were forced to take his farms. He dragged no one by
the collar. He gave them liberty to go to Australia, Canada, the
Americas, if they liked. * * * Still there were grumbling
tenants. He swarmed with game, and though he was liberal,
his hares and his birds were immensely destructive: computation
could not fix the damage done by them. Probably the farmers
expected them not to eat. 'There are two parties to a bargain,'
said Everard, 'and one gets the worst of it. But if he was
never obliged to make it, where's his right to complain?' Men
of sense rarely obtain satisfactory answers; they are provoked
to despise their kind."
He returns to the argument, deepened in unavoidable
pessimism:[3]
