THE DOWNTRODDEN
"Kumreds," announced Mr Tubes with winning familiarity, "I may say now
and once and for all that you've thoroughly convinced _me_ of the
justice of your claims. But that isn't saying that the thing's as good
as done, so don't go slinging it broadcast in the next pub you come to.
There's our good kumred the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be taken into
account, and while I'm about it let me tell you straight that these
Cabinet jobs, whether at twenty, fifty, or a hundred quid a week, aren't
the softest things going, as some of you chaps seem to imagine."
"Swap you, mate, then," called out a facetious L. & N. W. fireman. "Yus,
and throw the missis and kids into the bargain. Call it a deal?"
In his modest little house the Right Hon. James Tubes, M.P., Secretary
of State for the Home Department, was receiving a deputation. Success,
said his friends, had not spoiled him; others admitted that success had
not changed him. From the time of his first appearance in Parliament he
had been dubbed "Honest Jim" (perhaps a somewhat empty compliment in
view of the fact that every Labour constituency had barbed unconscious
satire at its own expense by distinguishing its representative as
"Honest" Tom, Dick, or Harry), and after his elevation to Cabinet rank
he still remained honest. More to the point, because more apparent, he
remained unpretentious. It is true that he ceased to wear, as a personal
concession to the Prime Minister, by whose side he sat, the grimy coal
miner's suit in which he had first appeared in the House to the
captivating of all hearts; but, more fortunate than Caractacus, he
escaped envy by continuing to occupy his humble villa in Kilburn. The
expenses of a Cabinet Minister, even in a Socialist Government, must
inevitably be heavier than those of a private member, but this admirable
man illustrated the uselessness of riches by continuing to live frugally
but comfortably upon a tenth of his official income. According to
intimate rumour he prudently invested the superfluous nine-tenths
against a rainy day in the gilt-edged securities of countries where
Socialism was least rampant.
Mr Tubes never refused to see a deputation, and when their views had
been laid before him it was rare indeed that he was not able to declare
a warm personal interest in their objects. True, he could not always
undertake to carry their recommendations into effect; as a Minister he
could not always express official approval of them, but they were rarely
sent away without the moral support of that wink which is proverbially
as significant as a more compromising form of agreement. Whether the
particular expression of the great voice of the people was in the
direction of the State adoption of Zulu orphans, or the compulsory
removal of park palings from around private estates, the deputation
could always go away with the inward satisfaction that however his words
might read to outsiders on the morrow, they knew that as a man and a
comrade, he, Jim Tubes, was with them heart and soul. "It costs
nothing," he was wont to remark broad-mindedly to his home
circle--referring, of course, to his own sympathetic attitude; for some
of the ingenuous proposals which he countenanced were found in practice
to prove very costly indeed--"and who knows what may happen next?"
But on this occasion, as far as compliance lay within his power, there
had been no need for mental reservation. The railway-men had been
patient under capitalistic oppression in the past; they were convincing
now in argument; and they were moderate in their demands for the future.
It was no "Vae victis!" that these sturdy wearers of green corduroy
trousers held out to their employers, but a cheery "Come now, mates.
Fair does and we'll mess along somehow till the next strike."
Mr Drugget, M.P., introduced the deputation. It consisted of railway
workers of all the lower grades with the exception of clerks. After many
ineffectual attempts to get clerks to enter the existing Labour ring, it
had been seriously proposed by the Labour wirepullers (who loved them in
spite of their waywardness, and would have saved them, and their votes
and their weekly contribution, from themselves) that they should form a
Union of their own in conjunction with shop assistants and domestic
servants. When the clerks (of whom the majority employed domestic
servants directly or indirectly in their homes or in their lodgings)
laughed slightly at the proposal; when the shop assistants smiled
self-consciously, and when the domestic servants giggled openly, the
promoters of this amusing triple alliance cruelly left them to their
fate thenceforward, pettishly declaring that all three were a set of
snobs--a designation which they impartially applied to every class of
society except their own, and among themselves to every minute
subdivision of Labour except the one which they adorned.
It devolved upon a rising young "greaser" in the service of the Great
Northern to explain, as spokesman, the object of the visit. Under the
existing unfair conditions the directors of the various companies were
elected at large salaries by that unnecessary and parasitic group, the
shareholders, while the workmen--the true creators of every penny of
income--had no direct hand in the management of affairs. When they
wished to approach the chief authorities it was necessary for them to
send delegates from their Union, who were frequently kept waiting ten
minutes in an ante-room; and although of late years their demands were
practically always conceded without demur, the position was anomalous
and humiliating. What seemed only reasonable to them, then, was that
they should have the right to elect an equal number of directors from
among themselves, who should sit on the Board with the other directors,
have equal powers, and receive similar salaries.
"To be, in fact, your permanent deputation to the Board," suggested the
Home Secretary.
"That's it--with powers," replied the G. N. man.
"There'll be some soft jobs going--then," murmured a shunter, who was
getting on in years, reflectively.
"No need for the missis to take in young men lodgers if you get one, eh,
Bill?" said his neighbour jocosely.
Whether it was the extreme unlikelihood of his ever being made a
director, or some other deeper cause, the secret history of the period
does not say, but Bill turned upon his innocent friend in a very
aggressive mood.
"What d'yer mean--young men lodgers?" he demanded warmly. "What call
have you to bring that up? Come now!"
"Why, mate," expostulated the offending one mildly, "no one said
anything to give any offence. What's the 'arm? Your missis does take in
lodgers, same as plenty more, don't she? Well, then!"
"I can take a 'int along the lines as well as any other," replied Bill
darkly. "It's gone far enough between pals. See? I never said anything
about your sister leaving that there laundry, did I? Never, I didn't."
"And what about it if you did?" demanded the neighbour, growing hot in
his turn. "I should think you'd have enough----"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," expostulated the glib young spokesman, as the
voices rose above the conversational whisper, "let us have absolute
unanimity, if _you_ please--expressed in the usual way, by all saying
nothing together."
"Wha's matter with Bill?" murmured the next delegate with polite
curiosity.
"Seems to me the little man is troubled with his teef," replied the
unfortunate cause of the ill-feeling, with smouldering passion. "Strike
me if he isn't. Ah!" And seeing the impropriety of relieving his
feelings in the usual way in a Cabinet Minister's private study, he
relapsed into bitter silence.
Mr Tubes having expressed his absolute approval of this detail of the
programme, the second point was explained. Why, it was demanded, should
the provisions of the Employers' Liability Act apply only to the hours
during which a man was at work? Furthermore, why should they apply only
to accidents? Supposing, said Mr William Mulch, the spokesman in
question, that a bloke went out in a social way among his friends, as
any bloke might, caught the small-pox, and got laid up for life with
after-effects, or died? Or suppose the bloke, after sweating through a
day's work, went home dog-tired to his miserable hovel, and broke his
leg falling over the carpet, or poisoned his hand opening a tin of
sardines? They looked to the present Government to extend the working of
the Act so as to cover the disablement or death of employes from every
cause whatever, natural death included, and wherever they might be at
the time. Under the present unfair and artificial conditions of labour,
the work-people were nothing but the slaves and chattels of capitalists,
and it was manifestly unfair that the latter should escape their
responsibilities after exploiting a man's labour for their own greedy
ends, simply because he happened to die of hydrophobia or senile decay,
or because the injury that disabled him was received outside the
foetid, insanitary den where in exchange for a bare sordid pittance
his flesh was ground from his bones for eight hours daily.
The Right Hon. gentleman expressed his entire concurrence with this
provision also, and roused considerable enthusiasm by mentioning that
some time ago he had independently arrived at the conclusion that such a
clause was urgently required.
Before the next point was considered, Comrade Tintwistle asked
permission to say a few words. He explained that he had no intention of
introducing a discordant note. On the contrary, he heartily supported
the proposal as far as it went, but--and here he wished to say that
though he only voiced the demands of a minority, it was a large, a
growing, and a noisy minority--it did not go far enough. The contention
of those he represented was that the responsibility of employers ought
to extend to the wives and families of their work-people. Many a poor
comrade was sadly harassed by having to keep a crippled child who would
never be a bread-winner, or an ailing wife who was incapable of looking
after his home comfort properly. They were fighting over again the
battle that they had won in the matter of free meals for school
children. It had taken years to convince people that it was equally
necessary that children who did not happen to be attending school should
have meals provided for them, and even more necessary to see that their
mothers should be well nourished; it had taken even longer to arrive at
the logical conclusion that if free meals were requisite, free clothes
were not a whit less necessary. No one nowadays doubted the soundness of
that policy, yet here they were again timorously contemplating
half-measures, while the insatiable birds of prey who sucked their blood
laughed in their sleeve at the spectacle of the British working men
hiding their heads ostrich-like in the shifting quicksand of a fool's
paradise.
The signs of approval that greeted this proposal showed clearly enough
that other members of the deputation had sympathetic leanings towards
the larger policy of the minority. Mr Tubes himself more than hinted at
the possibility of a personal conversion in the near future. "In the
meantime," he remarked, "everything is on your side. Your position is
logical, moderate, and just. All can admit that, although we may not all
exactly agree as to whether the time is ripe for the measure. With every
temptation to wipe off some of the arrears of injustice of the past, we
must not go so far as to kill the goose that lays the golden egg."
"How do you make that out?" demanded an unsophisticated young signalman.
"It's the work of the people that produces every penny that circulates."
"Oh, just so," replied Tubes readily. "That is the real point of the
story. It was the grains of corn that made the eggs, and the goose did
nothing but sit and lay them. We must always have our geese." He turned
to the subject in hand again with a laugh, and approved a few more
modest suggestions for abolishing "privileges."
"The last point," continued the spokesman, "is one that closely concerns
the principles that we all profess. I refer to the obsolete and
humiliating anachronism that with a Government pledged to the
maintenance of social equality in office, at any hour of the day, at
practically every railway station throughout the land you will still see
trains subdivided as regards designation and accommodation into first,
second, and third classes. It is a distinction which to us, as the
representatives of the so-called third class, is nothing more or less
than insulting. Why should me and my missis when we travel be compelled
to sit where the accidents generally happen and have to put up with
eighteen in a compartment, when smug clerks and saucy ladies' maids, who
are no better than us, enjoy the comparative luxury of only fifteen in a
compartment away from the collisions, and snide financiers and
questionable duchesses, who are certainly a good deal worse, sit in
padded rooms, well protected front and rear, and never know what it is
to be packed more than six a-side? If that isn't class distinction I
should like to know what is. It isn't--Gawd help us!--that we wish to
mix with these people, or that we envy their position or covet their
wealth. Such motives have never entered into the calculations of those
who have been foremost in Socialistic propaganda. But as thoughtful and
self-respecting units of an integral community we object to being
segregated by the imposition of obsolete and arbitrary barriers, we do
resent the artificial creation of social grades, and we regard with
antagonism and distrust the unjust accumulation of labour-created wealth
in the hands of the idle and incapable few.
"But if this is the standpoint of the great mass of the democracy, to us
of the Amalgamated Unions of Railway Workers and Permanent Way Staffs
the invidious distinction has a closer significance. As ordinary
citizens our sense of equality is outraged by the demarcations I have
referred to; but as our work often places us in a temporary
subordination to the occupants of these so-called first and second
classes, whom we despise intellectually and resent economically, we
incur the additional stigma of having to render them an external
deference which we recognise to be obsolete and servile. The Arden and
Avon Valley case, which earned the martyrdom of dismissal for William
Jukson and ultimately involved forty thousand of us in a now historic
strike, simply because that heroic man categorically refused to the
doddering Duke of Pentarlington any other title than the honourable
appellation of 'Comrade,' is doubtless still fresh within your minds. We
lost on that occasion through insufficiency of funds, but the ducal
portmanteau over which William Jukson took his memorable stand, will yet
serve as a rallying point to a more successful issue."
Mr Mulch paused for approbation, which was not stinted, but before he
could resume, a passionate little man who had been rising to a more
exalted state of fervour with every demand, suddenly hurled himself like
a human wedge into the forefront of the proceedings.
"Kumrids!" he exclaimed, breathless from the first, "with your kind
permission I would say a few words embodying a suggestion which, though
not actually included in the agenda, is quite in 'armony with the
subject before us."
"Won't it keep?" suggested a tired delegate hopefully.
"The suggestion is briefly this," continued the little man, far too
enthusiastic to notice any interruption, "that as a tribute to William
Jukson's sterling determination and as a perpetual reminder of the
issues raised, we forthwith add to the banners of the Amalgamated Unions
one bearing an allegorical design consisting of two emblematic figures
struggling for the possession of a leather portmanteau with the words
'No Surrender!' beneath. The whole might be made obvious to a person of
the meanest intelligence by the inscription 'A. and A. V. Ry. Test Case.
W. J. upholds the Principles of Social Democracy and Vindicates the
People's Rights,' running round."
"Why should he be running round?" asked a slow-witted member of the
deputation.
"Who running round?" demanded the last speaker, amenable to outside
influence now that he had said his say.
"William Jukson. Didn't you say he was to be on this banner vindicating
the people's rights running round? He stood there on the platform, man
to man, so I've always heard."
The redoubtable Jukson's champion cast a look of ineffable contempt upon
his simple brother and made a gesture expressive of despair. "That's
all," he said, and sat down.
Mr Mulch resumed his interrupted innings. "The suggestion will doubtless
receive attention if submitted through the proper channels," he remarked
a little coldly. It was one thing to take the indomitable Jukson under
his own aegis; quite another to countenance his canonisation at a period
when strenuous candidates were more numerous than remunerative niches.
"But to revert to the subject in hand from which we have strayed
somewhat. It only remains for me to say that all artificial distinctions
between class and class are distasteful to the people at large,
detestable to the powerful Unions on whose behalf we are here to-day,
and antagonistic to the interests of the community. We confidently look,
therefore, to the present Government to put an end to a state of things
that is inconsistent with the maintenance of practical Socialism."
Towards this proposal, also, Mr Tubes turned a friendly ear, but he
admitted that in practice his sympathies must be purely platonic, for
the time at least. In truth, the revenue yielded by the taxation of
first and second class tickets was so considerable that it could not be
ignored. Many people adopted the third class rather than suffer the
exaction, and the receipts of all the railway companies in the kingdom
fell considerably--to the great delight of that large section of the
Socialistic party that had not yet begun to think. But the majority of
the wealthy still paid the price, and not a few among the weak, aged,
and timorous, among children, old men, and ladies, were driven to the
superior classes which they could ill afford by the increased difficulty
of finding a seat elsewhere, and by the growing truculence of the
workmen who were thrust upon them in the thirds. For more than a decade
it had been observed that when a seat in tram or train was at stake the
age of courtesy was past, but a new Burke, listening to the conversation
of those around, might too frequently have cause to think that the age
of decency had faded also. Another development, contributing to the
maintenance of the higher classes, was the fact that one was as heavily
mulcted if he turned to any of the other forms of more exclusive
travelling. Private carriages of all kinds were the butt of each
succeeding Budget, even bicycles (unless owned by workmen) were not
exempt; and so heavily was the Chancellor's hand laid upon motor cars
(except such as were the property of Members of Parliament) that even
the Marquis of Kingsbery was satisfied, and withdrew his threat to haunt
the Portsmouth Road with an elephant gun.
And yet, despite the persistence of a Stuart in imposing taxation and
the instincts of a Vespasian in making it peculiarly offensive, the
Treasury was always in desperate straits. The reason was not far to
seek. In the old days Liberal governments had at times proved
extravagant; Tory governments had perhaps oftener proved even more
extravagant; but in each case it was the tempered profusion of those who
through position and education were too careless to count their pence
and too unconcerned to be dazzled by their pounds. The Labour and the
Socialist administrations proved superlatively extravagant: and there is
nothing more irredeemable than the spendthrift recklessness of your
navvy who has unexpectedly "come into money." The beggar was truly on
horseback, or, to travel with the times, he had set off in his motor
car, and he was now bowling along the great high-road towards the
cliff-bound sea of national perdition, a very absent-minded beggar
indeed, with a merry hand upon the high speed gear.
"I am with you heart and soul," therefore declared Mr Tubes as a man,
and as a member of the Cabinet added--"in principle. But the
contemplated Act for providing State maintenance of strikers, in strikes
approved of by the Board of Trade, makes it extremely undesirable to
abolish any of the existing sources of revenue, at least until we see
what the measure will involve."
"Save on the Navy, then," growled a malcontent in the rear rank.
"We have already reduced the Navy to the fullest extent that we consider
it desirable to go at present; that is to say, to the common-sense
limit--equality with any one of the other leading powers."
"The Army, then."
"We have already reduced the Army very considerably, but with a navy on
the lines which I have indicated and an army traditionally weaker at the
best than those of the great military powers, which are also naval
powers, is it prudent?" The gesture that closed the sentence clearly
expressed Mr Tubes's own misgivings on the subject. He had always been
regarded as a moderate though a vacillating man among his party, and the
"reduce everything and chance it" policy of a powerful section of the
Cabinet disturbed his rest at times.
"Why halt ye between two opinions?" exclaimed a clear and singularly
sweet voice from the doorway. "Temporise not with the powers of darkness
when the day of opportunity is now at hand. Sweep away arms and armies,
engines of war and navies, in one vast and irresistible wave of
Universal Brotherhood. Beat the swords into ploughshares, cast your guns
into instruments of music, let all strife cease. Extend the hand of
friendship and equality not only man to man and class to class, but
nation to nation and race to race. Make a great feast, and in love and
fellowship compel them to come in: so shall you inaugurate the reign of
Christ anew on earth."
Every one looked at the speaker and then glanced at his neighbour with
amusement, contempt, enquiry, here and there something of approval, in
his eye. "The Mad Parson," "Brother Ambrose," "The Ragged Priest," "St
Ambrose of Shadwell," ran from lip to lip as a few recognised the
tonsured barefoot figure standing in his shabby cassock by the door. Mr
Tubes alone, seated out of the range of whispers and a victim to the
defective sight that is the coal-pit heritage throughout the world,
received no inkling of his identity, and, assuming that he was a late
arrival of the deputation, sought to extend a gentle conciliation.
"The goal of complete disarmament is one that we never fail to strive
for," he accordingly replied, "but our impulsive comrade must admit that
the present is hardly the moment for us to make the experiment entirely
on our own. Prudence----"
"Prudence!" exclaimed the ragged priest with flashing vehemence. "There
is no more cowardly word in the history of that Black Art which you call
Statecraft. All your wars, all your laws, all tyranny, injustice,
inhumanity, all have their origin in a fancied prudence. It marks the
downward path in whitened milestones more surely than good intentions
pave that same decline. Dare! dare! dare! man. Dare to love your
brother. Herod was prudent when he sought to destroy all the children of
Bethlehem; it was prudence that led Pilate to deliver up our Master to
the Jews. The deadly _ignis fatuus_ of prudence marched and
counter-marched destroying armies from the East and from the West
through every age, formed vast coalitions and dissolved them
treacherously, made dynasties and flung them from the throne. It led
pagan Rome, it illumined the birth of a faith now choked in official
bonds, it danced before stricken Europe, lit the martyrs' fires, lured
the cold greed of commerce, and now hangs a sickly beacon over
Westminster. But prudence never raised the fallen Magdalene nor forgave
the dying thief. Christ was not _prudent_."
"Christ, who's 'e?" said a man who had a reputation for facetiousness to
maintain. "Oh! I remember. _He's_ been dead a long time."
Ambrose turned on him the face that led men and the eye that quelled.
"My brother," he almost whispered across the room, "if you die with that
in your heart it were better for you that He had never lived."
There was something in the voice, the look, the presence, that checked
the ready methods by which a hostile intruder was wont to be expelled.
All recognised a blind inspired devotion beside which their own party
enthusiasm was at the best pale and thin. Even to men who were wholly
indifferent to the forms of religion, Ambrose's self-denying life, his
ascetic discipline, his fanatical whole-heartedness, his noble--almost
royal--family, and the magnetic influence which he exercised over masses
of the most wretched of the poor and degraded gave pause for thought,
and often extorted a grudging regard. Not a few among those who had
dispassionately watched the rise and fall of parties held the opinion
that the man might yet play a wildly prominent part in the nation's
destinies and involve a tragedy that could only yet be dimly guessed:
for most men deemed him mad.
"Whatever you may wish to say this is neither the time nor the place,"
said Mr Drugget mildly. "We are not taking part in a public meeting
which invites discussion, but are here in a semi-private capacity to
confer with the Home Secretary."
"There is no time or place unseasonable to me, who come with Supreme
authority," replied Ambrose. "Nor, if the man is worthy of his office,
can the Home Secretary close his ears to the representative of the
people."
"The people!" exclaimed a startled member of the Amalgamated Unions.
"What d'yer mean by the 'representative of the people'? _We_ are the
representatives of the people. We _are_ the people!"
"You?" replied Ambrose scornfully, sweeping the assembly with his eye
and returning finally with a disconcerting gaze to the man who spoke,
"you smug, easy, well-fed, well-clad, well-to-do in your little way,
self-satisfied band of Pharisees, _you_ the people of the earth! Are you
the poor, are you the meek, the hungry, the persecuted? You are the
comfortable, complacent _bourgeoisie_ of labourdom. You can never
inherit the Kingdom of Christ on earth. Outside your gates, despised of
all, stand His chosen people."
There was a low, rolling murmur of approval, growing in volume before it
died away, but it rose not within the chamber but from the road outside.
"Mr Tubes," whispered the introducer of the deputation uneasily, "give
the word, sir. Shall we have this man put out?"
"No, no," muttered Tubes, with his eyes fixed on the window and turning
slightly pale; "wait a minute. Who are those outside?"
The Member of Parliament looked out; others were looking too, and for a
moment not only their own business was forgotten, but the indomitable
priest's outspoken challenge passed unheeded in a curious contemplation
of his following. At that period the sight was a new one in the streets
of London, though afterwards it became familiar enough, not only in the
Capital, but to the inhabitants of every large town and city throughout
the land.
Ambrose had been called "The Ragged Priest," and it was a very ragged
regiment that formed his bodyguard; he was "The Mad Parson," and an
ethereal mania shone in the faces of many of his followers, though as
many sufficiently betrayed the slum-bred cunning, the inborn brutishness
of the unchanged criminal and the hooligan, thinly cloaked beneath a
shifty mask of assumed humility. As became "St Ambrose," the banners
which here and there stood out above the ranks--mere sackcloth standards
lashed to the roughest poles--nearly all bore religious references in
their crude emblems and sprawling inscriptions. The gibes at charity,
the demands for work of an earlier decade had given place to another
phase. "Christ is mocked," was one; "Having all things in common," ran
another; while "As it was in the beginning," "Equality, in Christ," "Thy
Kingdom come," might frequently be seen. But a more significant note was
struck by an occasional threat veiled beneath a text, as "The sun shall
be turned into darkness, the moon into blood," though their leader
himself never hinted violence in his most impassioned flights. Among the
upturned faces a leisurely observer might have detected a few that were
still conspicuous in refinement despite their sordid settings--women
chiefly, and for the most part fanatical converts who had been swept off
their feet by Ambrose's eloquence in the more orthodox days when he had
thrilled fashionable congregations from the pulpit of a Mayfair church.
Other women there were in plenty; men, old and young; even a few
children; dirty, diseased, criminal, brutalised, vicious, crippled, the
unemployed, the unemployable. Beggars from the streets, begging on a
better lay; thieves hopeful of a larger booty; malcontents of every
phase; enemies of society reckoning on a day of reckoning; the
unfortunate and the unfortunates swayed by vague yearnings after
righteousness; schemers striving for their private ends; with a salting
of the simple-hearted; all held together so far by the vehement
personality of one fanatic, and glancing down the ranks one could
prophesy what manner of monster out of the depths this might prove when
it had reached rampant maturity. Poverty, abject poverty, was the
dominant note; for all who marched beneath the ragged banner must go in
rags.
Mr Drugget was the first to recover himself. "Look here," he said,
turning to Ambrose aggressively, "I don't quite catch on to your game,
but that's neither here nor there. If you want to know what I call it, I
call it a bit of blasted impertinence to bring a mob like that to a
man's private house, no matter who he may be. What's more, this is an
unlawful gathering according to Act of Parliament."
"That which breaks no divine commandment cannot be unlawful," replied
Ambrose, unmoved. "I recognise no other law. And you, who call
yourselves Socialists and claim equality, what are your laws but the old
privileges which you denounced in others extended to include yourselves,
what your equality but the spoliation of those above you?"
"We are practical Socialists," exclaimed one or two members with
dignity. "As reasonable men we recognise that there must be a limit
somewhere."
"Practical is the last thing you can claim to be. You are impractical
visionaries; for it would be as easy for a diver to pause in mid-air as
for mankind to remain at a half-way house to Equality. All! All! Every
man-made distinction must be swept away. Neither proprietor nor
property, paid leader nor gain, task-work nor pride of place; nothing
between God and man's heart. That is the only practical Socialism, and
it is at hand."
"Not while we're in office," said the Home Secretary shortly.
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," cast back Ambrose. "Where is now the
great Unionist party? In a single season the sturdy Liberal stronghold
crumbled into dust. You deposed a Labour government that was deemed
invulnerable in its time. Beware, the hand is already on the wall. Those
forces which you so blindly ignore will yet combine and crush you."
It was not unlikely. In former times it would have required barricades
and some personal bravery. But with universal suffrage the power of the
pauper criminal was no less than that of the ducal millionaire, and the
alcohol lunatic, presenting himself at the poll between the spasms of
_delirium tremens_, was as potent a force as the philosopher. A party
composed of paupers, aliens, chronic unemployed, criminals, lunatics,
unfortunates, the hysterical and degenerate of every kind, together with
so many of the working classes as might be attracted by the glamour of a
final and universal spoliation, led by a sincere and impassioned
firebrand, might yet have to be reckoned with.
"And you, comrade?" said a railway-man with pardonable curiosity. "When
you've had your little fling, who's going to turn _you_ out and come
in?"
"We!" exclaimed Ambrose with a touch of genuine surprise; "how can you
be so blind! We represent the ultimate destiny of mankind."
In another age and another place a form of government called the States
General, and largely composed of amiable clerics, had been called up to
redress existing grievances. Being found too slow, it gave place to the
National Assembly, and, to go yet a little faster, became the
Legislative Assembly. This in turn was left behind by the more
expeditious Girondins, but as even they lagged according to the bustling
times, the Jacobins came into favour. The ultimate development of
quick-change Equality was reached in the Hebertists. From one to another
had been but a step, and they were all "The People"; but while the
States General had looked for the millennium by the abolition of a
grievance here and there, and the lightening of a chafing collar in the
mass, the followers of Hebert found so little left for them to abolish
that they abolished God. The experiment convinced the sagest of the
leaders that human equality is only to be found in death, and, true to
their principles, they "equalised" a million of their fellow-countrymen
through the instrumentality of the guillotine, and other forms of moral
suasion. Grown more tender-hearted, "The People" no longer thirsted for
another section of "The People's" blood--only for their money; and in
place of Fouquier-Tinville and the Gentleman with the Wooden Frame,
their instruments of justice were represented by a Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and an individual delivering blue papers.
"We represent the ultimate destiny of mankind: absolute equality,"
announced Ambrose. "Any other condition is inconsistent with the
professions to which your party has repeatedly pledged itself. Will you,
my brother," he continued, addressing himself to the Home Secretary,
"receive a deputation?"
The deputation was already waiting at the outer door, three men and
three women. It included a countess, a converted house-breaker, and an
anarchist who had become embittered with life since the premature
explosion of one of his bombs had blown off both his arms and driven him
to subsist on the charitable. The other three were uninteresting
nonentities, but all were equal in their passion for equality.
"We are all pledged to the principle of social equality, and every step
in that direction that comes within the range of practical politics must
have our sympathy," replied Mr Tubes. "Further than that I am not
prepared to commit myself at present. That being the case, there would
be no object in receiving a deputation." To this had Mr Tubes come at
last.
"The unending formula," said Brother Ambrose with weary bitterness. "...
Bread, and you give them stones ... Man," he cried with sudden energy,
"almost within your grasp lies the foundation of New Jerusalem,
tranquil, smiling, sinless. What stands in your way? Nothing, nothing!
truly nothing but the heavy shadow of the old and cruel past. Throw it
off; is it not worth doing? No more spiritual death, no more sorrow of
the things of this world, nor crying, 'Neither shall there be any more
pain: for the former things are passed away.'"
"I have nothing more to say," responded the Home Secretary coldly,
bending over his desk to write.
"Then I have much more to do," retorted Ambrose impetuously, "and that
shall be with the sword of my mouth." He strode from the room with an
air that no amount of legislative equality could ever confer upon any of
those he left behind, and a moment later his ragged escort was in motion
homeward--slumward.
"Kumreds," said Mr Tubes, looking up, "the harmony of the occasion has
been somewhat impaired by an untoward incident, but on the whole I think
that you may rest well satisfied with the result of your
representations. Having another appointment I must now leave you, but I
have given instructions for some beer and sandwidges to be brought in,
and I trust that in my enforced absence you will all make yourselves
quite at home." He shook hands with each man present and withdrew.
"Beer and sandwidges!" muttered Comrade Tintwistle, with no affectation
of delight, to a chosen spirit. "And this is the man we pay fifty quid a
week to!"
"Ah!" assented the friend, following Mr Tubes's hospitable directions by
strolling round the room and fingering the ornaments. "Well, when it
comes to a general share-out I don't know but what I should mind having
this here little round barometer for my parlour."
"Neat little thing," assented Tintwistle with friendly interest. "What
does it say?"
"Seems to be dropping from 'Change' to 'Stormy,'" read the friend.