We have had a return of wintry weather, and the bairns had a glorious slide made on the road this morning. At dinner-time I found them loafing round the door.
"Why aren't you sliding," I asked. They explained that the village policeman had salted the slide. After marking the registers I took up the theme.
"Why did he salt the slide?" I asked.
"Because the farmers do not want their horses to fall," said one.
Then I took them to laws and their makers. "Children have no votes," I said, "farmers have; hence the law is with the farmers. Women have no votes and the law gives them half the salary of a man."
"But," said Margaret Steel, "would you have horses break their legs?" I smiled.
"No," I said, "and I would not object to the policeman's salting the slide if the law was thinking of animals' pain. The law and the farmers are thinking of property.
"Property in Britain comes before everything. I may steal the life and soul from a woman if I employ her at a penny an hour, and I may get a title for doing so. But if I steal Mr. Thomson's turnips I merely get ten days' hard."
"You bairns should draw up a Declaration of Rights," I added, and I think that a few understood my meaning.