“The last time we talked about The Bill, Antony, you said you were anxious that the Scotch Bill should take exactly the same position that the English Bill does. Will the Scotch do as you wish them?”
“It’s hard to get a Scotchman to confess that he is oppressed by anyone, or by any law. He doesn’t mind admitting a sentimental grievance about the place that the lion hes on the flag; but he’s far too proud to allow that anything wrong with the conditions of life is permissible in Scotland. Yet there are more socialists in Scotland than anywhere else, which I take as a proof that they are as dissatisfied as any other workingmen are.”
“What is it that the socialists are continually talking about?”
“They are talking about a world that does not exist, Annie, and that niver did exist, and promising us a world that couldn’t by any possibility exist. But I’ll tell thee what I hev found out just since I came here; that is, that if we are going to continue a Protective Government we’re bound to hev Socialism flourish. Let England stop running a government to protect rich and noble land owners, let her open her ports and give us Free Trade, and we’ll hear varry little more of socialism.”
“Will you go to The House to-night, Antony?”
“I wouldn’t miss going for a good deal. Last night’s session did not close till daylight and I’ll niver forget as long as I live the look of The House at that time. Grey had been speaking for an hour and a half, though he is now in his sixty-eighth year; and I could not help remembering that forty years previously, he had stood in the same place, pleading for the same Bill, Grey being at that date both its author and its advocate. My father was in The House then and I hev often heard him tell how Lord Wharncliffe moved that Grey’s Reform Bill should be rejected altogether; and how Lord Brougham made one of the grandest speeches of his life in its favor, ending it with an indescribable relation of the Sybil’s offer to old Rome. Now, Annie, I want to see the harvest of that seed sowed by Grey and Brougham forty years ago, and that harvest may come to-night. Thou wouldn’t want me to miss it, would thou?”
“I would be very sorry indeed if thou missed it; but what about the Sybil?”
“Why-a! this old Roman prophetess was called up by Brougham to tell England the price she would hev to pay if her rulers persisted in their abominable husbandry of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion. ‘Hear the parable of the Sybil!’ he cried. ‘She is now at your gate, and she offers you in this Bill wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; it is to restore the franchise, which you ought voluntarily to give. You refuse her terms and she goes away. But soon you find you cannot do without her wares and you call her back. Again she comes but with diminished treasures—the leaves of the book are partly torn away by lawless hands, and in part defaced with characters of blood. But the prophetic maid has risen in her demands—it is Parliament by the year—it is vote by the ballot—it is suffrage by the million now. From this you turn away indignant, and for the second time she departs. Beware of her third coming, for the treasure you must have, and who shall tell what price she may demand? It may even be the mace which rests upon that woolsack. Justice deferred enhances the price you must pay for peace and safety and you cannot expect any other crop than they had who went before you and who, in their abominable husbandry, sowed injustice and reaped rebellion.’”
Antony was declaiming the last passages of this speech when the door opened and Mrs. Temple entered. She sat down and waited until her brother ceased, then she said with enthusiasm:
“Well done, Antony! If thou must quote from somebody’s fine orations, Brougham and the Sybil woman were about the best thou could get, if so be thou did not go to the Scriptures. In that book thou would find all that it is possible for letters and tongues to say against the men who oppress the poor, or do them any injustice; and if I wanted to make a speech that would beat Brougham’s to a disorganized alphabet, I’d take ivery word of it out of the sacred Scriptures. I would that!”