“Who was lamenting lately that the combination laws were repealed, so that the masters cannot be prosecuted for oppression? Who proposed to burn them in effigy, tied to one another’s necks?”
The deputies looked at one another, and then answered that all this was only private talk of one of their meetings; it was never meant for earnest.
“Well, I only let you know that you may look about your Committee-room and find where the little bird builds that carries the matter; and if you can’t find her, take care that she has nothing to carry that you would be ashamed to own. Did you learn from her that the masters combine against you?”
“We learn it from our own eyes, and ears, and senses,” said Clack. “Have not masters oppressed their men from the beginning of the world?”
“Indeed I don’t know,” said Mr. Wentworth. “If Adam had a gardener under him in Paradise, they might have tried to turn one another out, but I never heard of it.”
“Stuff and nonsense, sir, begging your pardon. Don’t we know that masters always have lorded it over the poor? They were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and——”
“I wonder where mine is,” observed Mr. Wentworth; “I will look in my mother’s plate chest for it.”
The orator went on,—
“They openly treat us like slaves as long as they can, and when we will bear it no longer, they plot in secret against us. They steal to one another’s houses when they think we are asleep; they bolt their doors and fill their glasses to their own prosperity, and every bumper that goes down their throats is paid for with the poor man’s crust.”
“They must have made the little bird tipsy, Clack, before she carried you such a strange story as that.”