threats which leave no doubt that the meaning of this movement is--as
some of them boldly phrase it,--a war of the poor against the rich.
There is no mistaking what that means. This madness has been stopped for
the time, we are told, principally (as was to be expected), by the
superior common sense of their wives. But only, I fear, for a time.
Such men will go far, if not this time, then some other time. For they
believe what they say, and know what they want. They have done with
phrases, done with illusions. They are no longer deceived and hampered
by party cries against this and that grievance, real or imaginary, the
abolition of which the working classes demand so eagerly from time to
time, in the vain belief that if it were only got rid of the millennium
would be at hand. They have done long ago with remedial half-measures.
Landed aristocracy, Established Church, military classes, privileged
classes, restricted suffrage, and all the rest, have been abolished in
their country for two generations and more: but behold, the poor man
finds himself (or fancies himself, which is just as dangerous) no richer,
safer, happier after all, and begins to see a far simpler remedy for all
his ills. He has too little of this world's goods, while others have too
much. What more fair, more simple, than that he should take some of the
rich man's goods, and if he resists, kill him, crying, "Thou sayest, let
me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. Then I too will eat and drink,
for to-morrow _I_ die?" And so will the rich and poor meet together with
a vengeance, simply because neither of them has learnt that the Lord is
the maker of them all.

This is a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will
tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their
wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms.

I said a modicum of alms. I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any