“‘Have you considered, sir,’ said he, ‘where your Toryism will lead you to? Have you reflected that you of the middle class—I presume you belong to that order?’
“I bowed, and muttered something about printed cottons.
“‘Have you considered that by unjustly denying the rights of the lower orders under the impression that you are preserving the prerogative of the throne, that you are really undermining our order?’
“‘God forgive us,’ ejaculated I. ‘I hope we are not.’
“‘But you are,’ said he; ‘it is you, and others like you, who will not see the anomalous social condition of our country. You make no concessions until wrung from you; you yield nothing except extorted by force; the finances of the country are in a ruinous condition,—trade stagnated.’
“‘Quite true,’ said I; ‘Wriggles and Briggs stopped payment on Tuesday; there won’t be one and fourpence in the pound.’
“‘D—n Wriggles and Briggs!’ said he; ‘don’t talk to me of such contemptible cotton-spinner—’
“‘They were in the hardware line,—plated dish-covers, japans, and bronze fenders.’
“‘Confound their fenders!’ cried he again; ‘it is not of such grubbing fabricators of frying-pans and fire-irons I speak; it is of the trade of this mighty nation,—our exports, our imports, our colonial trade, our foreign trade, our trade with the East, our trade with the West, our trade with the Hindoos, our trade with the Esquimaux.’
“‘He’s Secretary for the Colonies; he has the whole thing at his finger-ends.’