If the
party that calls itself liberal were to have all its own way who
is there that doesn't believe that the church would go at once,
then all distinction between boroughs, the House of Lords
immediately afterwards, and after that the Crown.'
'Those are not my governor's ideas.'
'You governor couldn't help himself. A liberal party, with
plenipotentiary power, must go on right away to the logical
conclusion of its arguments. It is only the conservative feeling
of the country which saves such men as your father from being
carried headlong to ruin by their own machinery. You have read
Carlyle's French Revolution?'
'Yes, I have read that.'
'Wasn't it so there? There were a lot of honest men who thought
they could do a deal of good by making everybody equal. A good
many were made equal be having their heads cut off. That's why I
mean to be member of Polpenno and to send Mr Carbottle back to
London. Carbottle probably doesn't want to cut anybody's head
off.'
'I daresay he's as conservative as anybody.'
'But he wants to be a member for Parliament; and, as he hasn't
thought much about anything he is quite willing to lend a hand to
communism, radicalism, socialism, chopping people's heads off, or
anything else.
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