Volume Ii Part 10 (2/2)

'Capital! that's the very thing for Sloville, only you must pitch it a little stronger, and fire away at the lazy parsons and the 'aughty haristocracy, and say something about the blood-sucking manufacturers who leave us-who make all their wealth-to starve and die. We're agin 'em all, me and my pals.'

'Well, we will talk of that presently. If I get into Parliament, how am I to live?'

'Well, we must have paid members of Parliament; you'll be all right then.'

'Are you fond of professional parsons, Mr. Johnson?'

'No, I hate 'em like p'ison.'

'And yet you would have professional politicians. They are as odious to me as professional parsons. A man may mean well when he first sets out, but directly his political career becomes to him his bread-and-b.u.t.ter, he will cease to be an honest man. If he is paid by the people, he will be their slave, and not their representative. If he is paid by the State, he will so shape his conduct that he may secure his re-election. He cannot act honestly. By the necessity of his position he is bound to keep his place, because he needs his salary. It is as bad and infamous for a man to make politics his livelihood as religion. In America they have a cla.s.s of men known as professional politicians, and what is the result? that respectable Americans rarely enter public life.'

'Well, you do surprise me!' said Johnson, smoking his pipe uneasily. 'I knew you were a little crotchety when you came to our Chartist meeting, but I thought you went the whole hog.'

'Well, we've secured a good deal more for the people than you or I expected at that time.'

'Maybe,' said Johnson doggedly.

'But what do you want?'

Johnson's face brightened as he said:

'That's coming to the point-we do not want any more Whigs or Tories.'

'But if a Tory comes to Sloville and offers to give the people land-we can't say restore it, for we Anglo-Saxons never had an inch of the soil of England. If, further, he tell them that they have not had their fair share of the profits of capital-if he says he will get every one a fair day's wages for a fair day's work-that the working men shall have decent homes built for them by Government-that every one shall have his three acres and a cow-that the parent shall be relieved of all responsibility as regards his children-that, in short, he will bring the millennium-don't you think he will get returned whether he calls himself Whig or Tory?'

'I believe you,' said Johnson excitedly, giving the table an emphatic thump. 'Leastways, I knows many as will vote for him, and this I knows, that no one opposed to him would have much chance. There's none on 'em dare turn me out of a meetin', and there's none of 'em can drown my voice.'

'Yes, I had a good proof of that to-night. But don't you know that any man coming with such a programme is an impostor?'

'No, hang me if I do! I say he is the man for me and the United Buffaloes, of which I am the president, and who will vote as I do. I repeat, he is the man for Sloville.'

'Of course,' said Wentworth sarcastically, 'he is, and he is quite safe, because he knows he promises what he can never perform.'

'How do you make that?'

'Let us take the question of the working man not getting his fair share of the profits. You know Lancas.h.i.+re?'

'Well, I should think I do.'

'Well, so do I, and it seems to me that the workmen are pretty well employed, and pretty well off. They get their weekly wages.'

'Yes, in course they do.'

'But is it not a fact that not a bra.s.s farthing of profit is being made in the cotton trades, and that consequently at this time the workman has quite his fair share of the capital? Look at our great companies, our railways, our s.h.i.+ps, most of them earning no dividends or but small ones, but who employ millions of men at fair wages. You call the capitalist a bloodsucker, a vampire.'

'And so he is.'

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