“But the Reform Bill, squire? What was said about the Reform Bill and the many good things it promised us?”
“I niver heard it named, men. And I may as well tell you now that you need expect nothing in a hurry. All that really has been given you is an opportunity to help yoursens. Listen to me. The Reform Bill has taken from sixty boroughs both their members, and forty-seven boroughs hev been reduced to one member. These changes will add at least half a million voters to the list, and this half-million will all come from the sturdy and generally just, great middle class of England. It will mebbe take another generation to include the working class, and a bit longer to hev the laboring class educated sufficiently to vote. That is England’s slow, sure way. It doan’t say it is the best way, but it is our way, and none of us can hinder or hasten it. **
** In 1867, during Lord Derby’s administration, it was made
to include the artizans and mechanics, and in Gladstone’s
administration, A. D. 1884, the Reform Bill was made to
include agricultural and all day laborers.
“In the meantime you have received from your own class of famous inventors a loom that can make every man a master. Power-loom weaving is the most healthy, the best paid, and the pleasantest of all occupations. With the exception of the noise of the machinery, it has nothing disagreeable about it. You that already own your houses take care of them. Every inch of your ground will soon be worth gold. I wouldn’t wonder to see you, yoursens, build your awn mills upon it. Oh, there is nothing difficult in that to a man who trusts in God and believes in himsen.
“And men, when you hev grown to be rich men, doan’t forget your God and your Country. Stick to your awn dear country. Make your money in it. Be Englishmen until God gives you a better country, Which won’t be in this world. But whether you go abroad, or whether you stay at home, niver forget the mother that bore you. She’ll niver forget you. And if a man hes God and his mother to plead for him, he is well off, both for this world and the next.”
“That is true, squire.”
“God has put us all in the varry place he thought best for the day’s work He wanted from us. It is more than a bit for’ardson in us telling Him we know better than He does, and go marching off to Australia or New Zealand or Canada. It takes a queer sort of a chap to manage life in a strange country full of a contrary sort of human beings. Yorkshire men are all Yorkshire. They hevn’t room in their shape and make-up for new-fangled ways and ideas. You hev a deal to be proud of in England that wouldn’t be worth a half-penny anywhere else. It’s a varry difficult thing to be an Englishman and a Yorkshireman, which is the best kind of an Englishman, as far as I know, and not brag a bit about it. There’s no harm in a bit of honest bragging about being himsen a Roman citizen and I do hope a straight for-ard Englishman may do what St. Paul did—brag a bit about his citizenship. And as I hev just said, I say once more, don’t leave England unless you hev a clear call to do so; but if you do, then make up your minds to be a bit more civil to the strange people than you usually are to strangers. It is a common saying in France and Italy that Englishmen will eat no beef but English beef, nor be civil to any God but their awn God. I doan’t say try to please iverybody, just do your duty, and do it pleasantly. That’s about all we can any of us manage, eh, Jonathan?”
“We are told, sir, to do to others as we would like them to do to us.”
“For sure! But a great many Yorkshire people translate that precept into this—‘Tak’ care of Number One.’ Let strangers’ religion and politics alone. Most—I might as well say all—of you men here, take your politics as seriously as you take your religion, and that is saying a great deal. I couldn’t put it stronger, could I, Jonathan?”
“No, sir! I doan’t think you could. It is a varry true comparison. It is surely.”