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That candidature will be long remembered as a notable example of the dignified way in which an honest man, and one who was as much a philosopher in practice as in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and submit without injury to the insults of political opponents and of political time-servers professing to be of his own way of thinking.
But that was just what this curiously simple-minded President had done. If he went on in his weak, amiable way listening to the time-servers who were listening to the bigots, what would become of the country? And of the Secretary of State and his deep policies? The President must be pulled up short brought to his senses taught a lesson or two.
But any man who held such opinions, no matter how conspicuous his services had been, ran the risk of being accused of Tory sympathies. "Time-serving Whigs" and "trimmers" were the strangely inappropriate epithets hurled at men who, had they been in the slightest degree time-servers, would have shrunk from the thankless task of upholding good sense and humanity in the teeth of popular prejudice.
They represented the spirit of representative government at its best in avoiding the cowardice of time-servers and the low cunning of demagogues. All apparently were inspired by a fine spirit of self-effacement. Selfish ambition was conspicuously absent. They differed, at times heatedly, but always as gentlemen of candour and honour.
She could not restrain herself. 'Have you forgotten Mr. Austin, papa? It is Nevil's perfect truthfulness that makes him appear worse to you than men who are timeservers. Too many time-servers rot the State, Mr. Austin said. Nevil is not one of them.
However, these liberals are only a small minority, hated by their upper-class fellows as time-servers and renegades, and sundered by an immense gulf from the ignorant masses. At first sight we might think that the masses would, on the whole, be favourably disposed toward European political control.
Matt Peke explained that old "Feathery" was a highly respected character in the "Quantocks," and not only rented a large farm, but thoroughly understood the farming business. Moreover, that he had succeeded in making himself somewhat of a terror to certain timorous time-servers, on account of his heterodox and obstinate principles.
There are the bribes of those in power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and despair everywhere a land decaying.
For we of Taunton have ever kept the flame of the Covenant burning amongst us, obscured it may be at times by time-servers and Laodiceans, but none the less burning in the hearts of our people. All round us, however, there was a worse than Egyptian darkness, where Popery and Prelacy, Arminianism, Erastianism, and Simony might rage and riot unchecked and unconfined. But what do I see now?
If Burns had but kept to his plow and his fields, to the birds and the beasts, to the storms and the sunshine! He was a free man while he lived by his labor among his own people! Ambition makes of gentlemen time-servers and paltry politicians; of the plowman-poet it made an exciseman! "What will then become of the leisure you want me to have, Molly?" "Your father will see that you have it!
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