No great
politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet
mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to
make an impression of some kind on an audience.
There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on behalf
of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division. To say
that Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-fact,
independent, stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be inadequate.
He had outraged their beliefs, and roused the most profound suspicions.
They could not, for the life of them, make out what he was at. Though by
his adventures and his book, "Peace-a lost Cause," he was, in London,
a conspicuous figure, they had naturally never heard of him; and his
adventure to these parts seemed to them an almost ludicrous example of
pure idea poking its nose into plain facts--the idea that nations ought
to, and could live in peace being so very pure; and the fact that they
never had, so very plain!
At Monkland, which was all Court estate, there were naturally but
few supporters of Miltoun's opponent, Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, and the
reception accorded to the champion of Peace soon passed from curiosity
to derision, from derision to menace, till Courtier's attitude became so
defiant, and his sentences so heated that he was only saved from a rough
handling by the influential interposition of the vicar.
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