After all, their form
had been defied, on just grounds, no doubt--so just, indeed, that they
had at once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the strife.
Had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way
at once. They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so
acted, and that the resistance had been successful against such of their
own form as had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained
thereby, but the ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once.
"Confoundedly coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind," was
the general feeling.
So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the angel Gabriel were
to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most
abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world
groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years,
probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of said vested
interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had
delivered. They wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear
with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of
him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we
have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini,
and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands--men who
have holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by
respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large
balances at their bankers'? But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate
easy-chairs, and have no balances or bankers.
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