Part 40 (1/2)

I went on, more vehement than ever, to show them how all their misery sprung (as I then fancied) from being unrepresented--how the laws were made by the rich for the poor, and not by all for all--how the taxes bit deep into the necessaries of the labourer, and only nibbled at the luxuries of the rich--how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which the poor were p.r.o.ne, while it dared not interfere with the subtler iniquities of the high-born and wealthy--how poor-rates, as I have just said, were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not fully remunerated. I tried to make them see that their interest, as much as common justice, demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of the nation, such as would truly proclaim their wants, their rights, their wrongs; and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words.

To all which they answered, that their stomachs were empty, and they wanted bread. ”And bread we will have!”

”Go, then,” I cried, losing my self-possession between disappointment and the maddening desire of influence--and, indeed, who could hear their story, or even look upon their faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him.

unless self-interest had drugged his heart and conscience--”go,” I cried, ”and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. No man is bound to starve. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one. Laws were made for man, not man for laws. If you had made the laws yourselves, they might bind you even in this extremity; but they were made in spite of you--against you. They rob you, crash you; even now they deny you bread.

G.o.d has made the earth free to all, like the air and suns.h.i.+ne, and you are shut out from off it. The earth is yours, for you till it. Without you it would be a desert. Go and demand your share of that corn, the fruit of your own industry. What matter, if your tyrants imprison, murder you?--they can but kill your bodies at once, instead of killing them piecemeal, as they do now; and your blood will cry against them from the ground:--Ay, Woe!”--I went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a G.o.d's truth in them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it--”Woe unto those that grind the faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back by fraud, cry out against them; and their cry has entered into the ears of the G.o.d of heaven--”

But I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for ”Bread!

Bread!” My hearers had taken me at my word. I had raised the spirit; could I command him, now he was abroad?

”Go to Jennings's farm!”

”No! he ain't no corn, he sold un' all last week.”

”There's plenty at the Hall farm! Rouse out the old steward!”

And, amid yells and execrations, the whole ma.s.s poured down the hill, sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats.

I tried again and again to stop and harangue them. I shouted myself hoa.r.s.e about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence; entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed; but my voice was drowned in the uproar. Still I felt myself in a measure responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not, in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the point of a pitchfork.

Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palings, we entered a wide, rushy, neglected park, and along an old gravel road, now green with gra.s.s, we opened on a sheet of frozen water, and, on the opposite bank, the huge square corpse of a hall, the close-shuttered windows of which gave it a dead and ghastly look, except where here and there a single one showed, as through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfurnished rooms within. On the right, beneath us, lay, amid tall elms, a large ma.s.s of farm-buildings, into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously--just in time to see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park, amid the yells of the mob.

”The old rascal's gone! and he'll call up the yeomanry. We must be quick, boys!” shouted one, and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys; while a few of the more steady went up to the house-door, and knocking, demanded sternly the granary keys.

A fat virago planted herself in the doorway, and commenced railing at them, with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their s.e.x gives to coa.r.s.e women; but she was hastily shoved aside, and took shelter in an upper room, where she stood screaming and cursing at the window.

The invaders returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It was a sad sight. Here was a poor s.h.i.+vering woman, hiding sc.r.a.ps of food under her cloak, and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had left at home. There was a tall man, leaning against the palings, gnawing ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy, who had scrambled up behind him. Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me, with a can of ale.

”Drink, my beauty! you're dry with hollering by now!”

”The ale is neither yours nor mine; I won't touch it.”

”Darn your b.u.t.tons! You said the wheat was ourn, acause we growed it--and thereby so's the beer--for we growed the barley too.”

And so thought the rest; for the yard was getting full of drunkards, a woman or two among them, reeling knee-deep in the loose straw among the pigs.

”Thresh out they ricks!” roared another.

”Get out the thres.h.i.+ng-machine!”

”You harness the horses!”

”No! there bain't no time. Yeomanry'll be here. You mun leave the ricks.”

”Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get naught by they.”

”Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's farm!”