Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.

by B. L. Farjeon

'What's that Secretary 'Postle's name?' muttered Jimmy Virtue as he looked at a small handbill of the proceedings. 'Mark Mallard! H'm! Mark Mallard.' And then turned his attention to a study of Mark Mallard's face, which seemed, indeed, to be the principal reason for Jimmy Virtue's presence on the occasion.

'You are strangely interested in that secretary, Jimmy,' observed Robert Truefit.

'You let me alone,' replied Jimmy Virtue; 'I'm a puzzlin' out somethin'. I've got my considerin' cap on.'

And as he was evidently engaged in an intricate mental process, we did not disturb him.

The Temple of Liberty held probably nearly two hundred persons, and it was quite full. We three were among the earliest arrivals, and occupied the front seat directly facing the platform. I noticed that there was a large number of decently-clad working men present, some with earnest faces, who had evidently come with the intention of arguing matters out in a certain sense fairly. Many members of the new Working-man's League were also present, and these were prepared to support their officers through thick and thin. The chief of these officers and the principal speaker among them was the Secretary, Mark Mallard, who was voted to the chair. He was a common-looking man between fifty and sixty years of age, and his face bore strong marks of a life's discontent of mind; a man, thought I, who would be envious of his neighbour's ox, but too indolent to work for that which he envied. The unfavourable opinion I formed of him became strengthened as I studied the signs in his face: he was evidently an unfit man to be a leader in any good cause. But he could speak in a fairly-fluent style and with a certain rough readiness which found favour with many among his audience. He was not eloquent, but ready-tongued, and from long practice, as I judged, knew how to make such use of his materials as would best please the kind of assemblage he was addressing now. He first proceeded to give a brief account of the establishment in the neighbourhood of the new Working-man's League, a branch, he said, of a greater institution which was to set everything right for the working man--and by the working man he meant the poor man. Throughout the whole of the proceedings he placed idle poverty and honest labour on one pedestal, and sought to prove--and did prove to many only too ready to believe--how the poor man was ground down, oppressed, and crushed by the 'ruthless' heel of the rich. The Working-man's League would seek to bring about a different state of things; its aim was to give the working man the rights which were unlawfully denied to him in the present condition of things, and to prove that the real power of the nation lay in labour, and not in capital. This, of course, was received with cheers. The orator showed no originality either in his propositions or in his mode of placing them before his hearers; but they were none the less enthusiastically received on that account. Fairly sifted and summed up, his utterances amounted to nothing more than the usual declamation concerning the rich and the poor, and the atrocious injustice of a state of things which allows one man to have more money in his purse than another. The old platitudes which cling to the vexed subject came trippingly off his tongue. If, he said, the real power of the country lay in labour and not in capital, then labour should govern the country; but to show the unfairness of things, and the howl that the moneyocracy raised at the slightest attempt to set things right, let them bring to mind how, if a working man tried to get into Parliament, he was hounded down and barked at by the wealthy classes. Well, if the wealthy classes, and he was sorry to say the middle classes also, denied justice to the working man, the time had come for the working man to set up shop for himself. He did not lose sight of the ostensible purpose for which the meeting was called. He detailed two instances of the mal-administration of justice which had gone the round of the papers and had created some noise.

There is nothing that so impresses a meeting composed of ordinary minds, such as this was, as the bringing forward of small facts which have already been commented on among themselves. One instance of the miscarriage of justice was where a gentleman-farmer had flogged a labourer to within an inch of his life, and was punished for the offence by a fine of five pounds inflicted by another gentleman-farmer, before whom, as a magistrate, the case was brought. 'What was five pounds to him?' asked the speaker. 'What's five pounds to the man who has thousands in the bank? Five pounds or three months' imprisonment! Why, the rich farmer pulled out the money with a grin on his face, and was heard to say afterwards that what he'd done was the proper thing to do to such scum--meaning the working man--when they dared to say they were not well enough paid, and couldn't support a family on twelve shillings a week. Twelve shillings a week! That was the sum this agricultural labourer had starved upon--him and his wife and children--for more than twenty years. And he became a union-man, and spoke up for his rights; and his master marked him, and nigh killed him for it. Was that five pounds' fine justice, I should like to know?' The other instance was that of a labouring man who, under more aggravating circumstances, had thrashed a gentleman and beat him severely, and who was put in prison for six months for the offence. 'And while he was in prison,' said the speaker, 'how was his wife to get bread for her children? After this, will any one dare to say that there's not one law for the rich and another for the poor? And shall this state of things be allowed to continue?'

The recapitulation of these familiar illustrations accomplished more than could have been accomplished by volumes of rhetoric, and cries of 'No, no!' came from all parts of the hall.

'The mischief is,' whispered Robert Truefit to me, 'that these instances are true. See how intent Jimmy is upon our worthy chairman.'

After the passing of resolutions condemning the judicial decisions in the strongest terms, other and more daring matter was gone into; and then I saw plainly, what I had hitherto only suspected, that the Working-man's League was in reality a republican club (in the shell), the promoters of which were ready with fiery words to inflame the minds of the ignorant against all recognised authority. One of the great points that Mark Mallard made was, that he, like themselves, was a working man.