Chapter IV

HIRAM'S BEDESMEN


The parties most interested in the movement which is about to set
Barchester by the ears were not the foremost to discuss the merit
of the question, as is often the case; but when the bishop, the
archdeacon, the warden, the steward, and Messrs Cox and Cummins,
were all busy with the matter, each in his own way, it is not to be
supposed that Hiram's bedesmen themselves were altogether passive
spectators. Finney, the attorney, had been among them, asking sly
questions, and raising immoderate hopes, creating a party hostile
to the warden, and establishing a corps in the enemy's camp, as he
figuratively calls it to himself. Poor old men: whoever may be
righted or wronged by this inquiry, they at any rate will assuredly
be only injured: to them it can only be an unmixed evil. How can
their lot be improved? all their wants are supplied; every comfort is
administered; they have warm houses, good clothes, plentiful diet,
and rest after a life of labour; and above all, that treasure so
inestimable in declining years, a true and kind friend to listen to
their sorrows, watch over their sickness, and administer comfort as
regards this world, and the world to come!

John Bold sometimes thinks of this, when he is talking loudly of the
rights of the bedesmen, whom he has taken under his protection; but he
quiets the suggestion within his breast with the high-sounding name
of justice: "_Fiat justitia, ruat coelum_." These old men should,
by rights, have one hundred pounds a year instead of one shilling