"The finest of us are animals, after all, and live by eating and sleeping, and, taken as animals, not so badly off, either—unless we happen to be Dorsetshire laborers—or Spitalfield weavers—or colliery children—or marching soldiers—or, I am afraid, one half of English souls this day."
Nor is he lacking in a constructive outlook. In connection
with a fling at the "amusingly inconsistent, however
well-meant scene in Coningsby," in which Disraeli
illustrates his idea of a beneficent aristocracy, he has one
of his characters meditate that—[1]
"It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age * * * to make the
people constantly and visibly comprehend that property is their
protector and their friend, but I question whether it will suit the
people themselves, unless they can make property understand
that it owes them something more definite than protection."
At that time there was not much disposition to believe
these ills could be cured by legislation. On the contrary,
the numerous satiric hits at various governmental departments
were aimed not at the general laissez faire policy
of the State, but at its indifferent success in the matters
over which it had already assumed jurisdiction, and its
unwarranted encroachment into others. The reasoning
seemed to be that an institution which had been unfaithful
and convicted of inertness, graft, and stupidity in its
limited operations would be unlikely to be more alert,
honest, and intelligent if its burdens were increased. David
Copperfield is shocked to learn from Mr. Spenlow the
ways of the law, and still more so at Mr. Spenlow's cold-*
- ↑ Yeast, 236. He also has a sneer for the patronizing scheme of Vieuxbois, in which "of course the clergy and the gentry were to educate the poor, who were to take down thankfully as much as it was thought proper to give them: and all beyond was 'self-will' and 'private judgment,' the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, Trades-union strikes, and French Revolutions." 117.
