Mr. Arch is a thoroughly able man, but he hardly
knows even his own world,—Warwickshire,—yet. He has been answering quite seriously Mr. Newdegate's accusation that the Jesuits had educated him and prepared him for his agricultural labourers' agitation. He said he had been persecuted by the village clergy- man because he was a Primitive Methodist, and that instead of having been put up to the agitation by Archbishop Manning, he had really been driven into it by the impossibility of providing for a wife and two children on 9s. a week. Mr. Arch further as- serted that some of Mr. Newdegate's statements were calculated to set class against class. No doubt they were if they had been made by any one but Mr. Newdegate ; but Mr. Arch must learn to understand that we have a few privileged men in our English political life who are always innocent, whatever they say, because they are the victims of "fixed ideas." No one " minds" Mr. Newdegate. He is an excellent person, not quite politically sane, whom Mr. Arch must learn to humour, as the rest of us humour him, if he would really get the ear of English politicians.
Previous page
