palliate a phrase of Norburn's that had been greeted with angry groans and protests. Mr. Norburn had in fact referred to the Capitalist class as a "parasitic growth," and Medland was left to get out of this indiscretion as best he could. He referred to the unhappy phrase. The storm which had greeted its first appearance broke out again. There were cries of "Withdraw!" Mr. Kilshaw called out, "Do you adopt that? Yes or no;" Norburn's followers cheered; redoubled groans answered them; Eleanor made notes, and Alicia's eyes were fixed on Medland, who stood silent and smiling.
Kilshaw cried again, "Do you adopt it?"
Medland turned towards him, and in slow and measured tones began to describe a visit he had paid to Kilshaw's mill. He named no name, but everybody knew to whose works he referred.
"There was a man there," he said, "working with a fever upon him; there was a woman working—and by her, her baby, five days old; there were old men who looked to no rest but the grave, and children who were always too tired to play; there were girls without innocence, boys without merriment, women without joy, men without hope. And, as I walked home in the evening, back to my house, I met a string of race-horses; they were in training, I was told, for the Kirton Cup; their owner spent, they said, ten thousand pounds a year on his stables. Their owner, Sir, owned the mill—and them that worked there."
He paused, and then, with a gesture unusual in
that place, he laid his hand on Norburn's shoulder, and went on in a tone of gentle apology:
"What wonder if men with hot hearts and young heads use hard words? What wonder if they confound the bad with the good? Yes, what wonder if, once again, good and bad shall fall in a common doom?"
He sat down suddenly, still keeping his hand on his young colleague's shoulder, and Sir Robert rose and prayed leave to say a few words in reference to the—he seemed to pause for a word—the remarkable utterance which had fallen from the Premier. Sir Robert's rapier flashed to and fro, now in grave indignation, now in satirical jest, and, at the end, he rose almost to eloquence in bidding the Premier remember the responsibility such words, spoken by such a man, carried with them.
"You may say," said Sir Robert, "that to prophesy revolution is not to justify it—that to excuse violence is not to advocate it. Ignorant men reck little of wire-drawn distinctions, and I am glad, Sir—I say, I am glad that not on my head rests the weight of such wild words and open threats as we have heard to-day. For my head is grey, and I must soon give an account of what I have done."
The debate ended, leaving the general impression that the Government stood committed to a policy which some called thorough and some dangerous. Mr. Kilshaw, passing Puttock in the lobby, remarked,