He secures tenants who can produce the most to the
community by their capital, tested through competitive
examination in their bankers’ accounts and the
security they can give, and through the rigidity of
covenants suggested by a Liebig and reduced into law
by a Chitty. But on my father’s land I
see a great many tenants with little skill and less
capital, ignorant of a Liebig and revolting from a
Chitty, and no filial enthusiasm can induce me honestly
to say that my father is a good landlord. He
has preferred his affection for individuals to his
duties to the community. It is not, my friends,
a question whether a handful of farmers like yourselves
go to the workhouse or not. It is a consumer’s
question. Do you produce the maximum of corn to
the consumer?
“With respect to myself,” continued the
orator, warming as the cold he had engendered in his
audience became more freezingly felt,—“with
respect to myself, I do not deny that, owing to the
accident of training for a very faulty and contracted
course of education, I have obtained what are called
‘honours’ at the University of Cambridge;
but you must not regard that fact as a promise of
any worth in my future passage through life.
Some of the most useless persons—especially
narrow-minded and bigoted—have acquired
far higher honours at the University than have fallen
to my lot.
“I thank you no less for the civil things you
have said of me and of my family; but I shall endeavour
to walk to that grave to which we are all bound with
a tranquil indifference as to what people may say of
me in so short a journey. And the sooner, my
friends, we get to our journey’s end, the better
our chance of escaping a great many pains, troubles,
sins, and diseases. So that when I drink to your
good healths, you must feel that in reality I wish
you an early deliverance from the ills to which flesh
is exposed, and which so generally increase with our
years that good health is scarcely compatible with
the decaying faculties of old age. Gentlemen,
your good healths!”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE morning after these birthday rejoicings, Sir Peter
and Lady Chillingly held a long consultation on the
peculiarities of their heir, and the best mode of
instilling into his mind the expediency either of
entertaining more pleasing views, or at least of professing
less unpopular sentiments; compatibly of course, though
they did not say it, with the new ideas that were
to govern his century. Having come to an agreement
on this delicate subject, they went forth, arm in
arm, in search of their heir. Kenelm seldom met
them at breakfast. He was an early riser, and
accustomed to solitary rambles before his parents
were out of bed.
The worthy pair found Kenelm seated on the banks of
a trout-stream that meandered through Chillingly Park,
dipping his line into the water, and yawning, with
apparent relief in that operation.
“Does fishing amuse you, my boy?” said
Sir Peter, heartily.
Copyrights
Kenelm Chillingly — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
