and a God’s mercy it is, for if he tried it, he would waste and spoil the best of materials in the making.”
“All such talk is sheer nonsense, Josepha.”
“It is nothing of the kind. Josepha has seen how such sheer nonsense turns out. I should think thou could remember what happened fifty years ago. People laughed then at the sheer nonsense of thirteen little colonies in the wilds of America trying to make England give them exactly what Englishmen are this very day ready to fight for— representation in parliament. And you need not forget this fact also, that the majority of Englishmen at that day, both in parliament and out of it, backed with all the power they hed these thirteen little colonies. Why, the poor button makers of Sheffield refused to make buttons for the soldiers’ coats, lest these soldiers should be sent to fight Englishmen. It was then all they could do but their children are now two hundred thousand strong, and king and parliament hev to consider them. They hev to do it or to take the consequences, Antony Annis! Your father was hand and purse with that crowd and I knew you would see things as they are sooner or later. For our stock came from a poor, brave villager, who followed King Richard to the Crusades, and won the Annis lands for his courage and fidelity. That is why there is allays a Richard in an Annis household.”
“I believe all you say, Josepha, and our people, the rich and the poor, both believe it. They hev given the government ivery blessed chance to do fairly by them. Now, if it does so, well and good. If it does not do so, the people are full ready to make them do it. I can tell you that.”
“I am so tired of it all,” said Annie wearily. “Why do poor, uneducated men want to meddle with elections for parliament? I can understand and feel with them in their fight about their looms—it means their daily bread; but why should they care about the men who make our laws and that sort of business?”
“I’ll tell thee why. They hev to do it or else go on being poor and ignorant and of no account among men. Our laws are made to please the men who have a vote or a say-so in any election. The laboring men of England hev no vote at all. They can’t say a word about their rights in the country for through the course of centuries the nobles and the rich men hev got all the votes in their awn pockets.”
“Maybe there is something right in that arrangement, Antony. They are better educated.”
“Suppose that argument stood, Annie; still a poor man might like one rich man better than another, and he ought to be able to hev his chance for electing his choice; but that, however, is only the tag-end of the question.”
“Then what is the main end?”
“This:—In the course of centuries, places once of some account hev disappeared, as really as Babylon or Nineveh, and little villages hev grown to be big cities. There is no town of Sarum now, not a vestige, but the Chatham family represent it in parliament to-day or they sell the position or give it away. The member for the borough of Ludgershall is himself the only voter in the borough and he is now in parliament on his awn nomination. Another place has two members and only seven voters; and what do you think a foreigner visiting England would say when told that a green mound without a house on it sent two members to Parliament, or that a certain green park without an inhabitant also sent two members to Parliament? Then suppose him taken to Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield, and other great manufacturing cities, and told they had no representative in Parliament; what do you suppose he would think and say?”