“And why should they be the same? Who made the rules? You”—he pointed an accusing finger—“you, and men like you. When you say morality, you mean monogamy. Who set up monogamy as the idol that all the human race ought to fall down and worship? It was not religion—there is not a word in favour of monogamy in the Bible. It is an Anglo-Saxon fad.”
“Of course, if you repudiate the laws of morality, I cannot argue with you.”
“I am not arguing. I am trying to make you understand. I want to see if it isn’t possible to stop all this cruelty—this frantic Puritan craze for killing everybody who isn’t a Wesleyan. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t mind your being respectable; why should you mind my being disreputable? What business is it of yours?”
“You forget that you are my brother, and that I suffer for your conduct.”
Alistair shook his head.
“That isn’t true, Trent, and you know it isn’t true. Here you are, Secretary of State, with the Garter in prospect, and a very fair chance of the Premiership, if no man with brains comes along. If I ever were to reform, as you are always urging me to do, and go into politics, you would find me a rather dangerous rival, you know.” Trent thought of Hero, and winced. There was something in what his brother was saying. Alistair, in the House of Commons, with his fascinating manner and sparkling wit, would be a rather dangerous rival. And he had never seen it, never realized that their mother’s anxiety to make Alistair enter the House might be another of those projects to save the younger son at the expense of the elder. While these reflections were passing through his slow mind, Alistair was still speaking.
“No, Trent, it is the other way about. I don’t suppose that you will ever see it, but I see it now. Instead of your suffering for me, it is I who suffer for you. You owe everything you are, and have, and may be, to me.”
“How on earth can you say that?”
“Because I am the younger son—the younger son in more senses than one. The law gives you the dukedom and the estates, and gives me nothing, is a law which makes me suffer for your benefit. And it is the same with all the other laws under which we live. They are all laws made in your favour at my expense. The whole social system has been created to favour you and oppress me. The laws of morality, as you call them, they are all made by men like you, and against men like me. You have regulated the world to suit yourself, and the man whom your regulations do not suit is sacrificed to secure your happiness. Yes, it is just like the old days when they buried a victim under the foundation stone, to make the building safe. You and your world, society, civilization, the British Empire—call it what you like—you are the builders, and it is the building; and all we whom you hang and exile and imprison—Jacobites in one century and anarchists in another, Byron and Shelley above, and the pickpocket and drunkard below—all we are the foundation victims, whom you sacrifice in order to secure your State.”
Trent felt out of his depth. In his confusion of mind he said the most unwise thing he could have said.