He’d tried to speak to Richard, to offer his sympathy. It had not gone well.
In any case, Dominic had been too damned busy for social calls, even had he been welcome in Richard’s company. He’d barely had a night free, except for the Wednesdays that he guarded with fierce single-mindedness, and Silas was the same, and for much the same reason.
“Dominic?” It was Absalom Lockwood, the Whig lawyer. “Good God, haven’t seen you here in an age.”
“I’ve been occupied.”
“I’m sure you have.” Absalom collapsed into a chair, so that the brandy slopped up the side of his glass. “If I propose confusion to Sidmouth, will you drink?”
“You don’t need to propose confusion,” Dominic said. “We have no shortage of that.”
“Ha.” Absalom took a mouthful of brandy. “Do you support these measures?”
Dominic stared into the fire. “Something must be done. You know that. There is not a man of property who does not fear for his possessions, his security. The rule of law, the influence of religion, the very Crown are under threat. The radicals are calling for the use of force against the House of Commons, against the better classes—”
“Nobody denies there is unrest,” Absalom said. “Its extent is grossly exaggerated, in my view. And can you believe that the answer to discontent is to attack the liberties at the heart of the British constitution?”
Dominic let his head flop back against the chair. “No.”
Pause.
“I beg your pardon?” Absalom said.
“I said, if you must have it, no. No, I do not believe Sidmouth’s bills are the answer.”
The Home Secretary was pushing through a new raft of legislation, terrifying in its severity. Every meeting for radical reform is an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against the king and his government, he had decreed in Parliament. The bills would restrict public meetings dealing with the subjects of church and state, prevent men from taking up arms, and give magistrates the right to search for and seize them, even in private houses. They would vastly increase the taxes on printed matter as an open attack on the reading poor. And they would punish blasphemous and seditious libel with harsh penalties, including up to fourteen years’ transportation for a second conviction.
Silas had already been gaoled for that once.
“I don’t think it’s right,” he went on. “Heaven knows, I fear revolution here. Heaven knows the radicals must be muzzled lest they bite. But this, what Sidmouth proposes, this is not England.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t want to see this country overthrown. I believe in the existing order, not in the power of the mob, and I don’t want to see England suffer what France has. Reformist bleating is dangerous. But the England I want to preserve is not a place where men are forbidden to meet, forbidden to speak, obliged to stand by while their houses are invaded. My stars, Absalom, I want to defend my country, but if these are the measures it takes?” He tossed back a mouthful of brandy. “It is as though a surgeon should inform a patient that in order to cure his ailment he is required to cut off his head.”
“Ha! Precisely,” Absalom said. “Sidmouth is concerned with the success of the operation, and has no regard for what it will do to the body of the patient.”
“Things will be worse if these bills pass,” Dominic went on. “Much worse. The radicals are shouting for a voice, and Sidmouth’s response is to take away the voice they have.”
“You sound like a Whig.”
“I do not. I have no desire to give revolutionaries anything. But…they are still Englishmen. Not foreign agents provocateurs, not Bonapartists. Englishmen who disagree with the government. And they are wrong, and dangerous, but if we cannot prove our case to be the better one, if we can only counter them by throwing away the rights and liberties that we have held precious for centuries, what does that say for our case?”
“Sidmouth is a reactionary fool,” Absalom said. “And a coward at heart, and like all cowards, he is far too forceful. I couldn’t agree with you more, and there is something I doubt I have said to you before.”
Dominic tipped his glass to acknowledge that. “Wearisome times. I hope your fellows can talk these bills down in the House. And that is not something I would often say.”
Absalom nodded. “What will you do if they pass?”
“If that is the law of the land…” Dominic made a face. He was Home Office, Absalom a barrister, both of them employed by the law, both of them enthusiastically breaking it in their private hours, given half a chance.