“Nonsense, man! You’re just like the rest, trying to crack a joke at the expense of a grand scheme for benefiting our species. You forget that under our present idiotic system a poor man cannot often get his half ounce to divide into pinches, whereas under the ‘five acres and thousand punds’ doctrine you could rear your own tobacco, dry it, make Taddy of it, and then snuff it, without the necessity of your arithmetic.”
“And mak’ our ain whisky tae,” rejoined James, “and get a’ drunk?”
“No,” responded the theorist. “We might certainly distil our own whisky, but not get all drunk. Drunkenness is the consequence of our present system, where poverty makes misery, and misery flies to the bottle, and where bloated wealth produces epicures, who disdain whisky, but wallow in wine from morning to night.”
“And yet they’re no ill chields, thae grand folk, after a’,” said James. “Mony a shilling I get when my basket’s emptied. It comes a’ round. If they get, they gie; and they’re no unmindfu’ o’ the puir.”
“I’m poor,” cried the cobbler; “do they mind me? No. They grind me down to a farthing, and are ready to say, when I support the rights of labour, ‘Well, labour then, and be paid; and when you can’t work, you have the workhouse between you and starvation.’ And yet I have a soul as noble as theirs.”
“And nobler,” said James, with his quiet humour; “for you would mak’ a paradise o’ the world, and every ane o’ us an angel, without wings; but we wouldna’ need wings, for wha would think o’ fleeing out o’ paradise?”
“Your old mockery, James,” said Wright, a little touched. “The great problem of the happiness of mankind is not a subject for ridicule.”
“It’s yoursel’ that’s making the fun,” rejoined his friend. “I was only using your ain words. But could we no speak about something else than the ‘five acres and thousand pounds’ doctrine? I never could comprehend it.”
“And never can,” was the tart reply. “You haven’t capacity. It requires deep thought to solve the problem of human happiness, and you needn’t try; but you might listen to instruction.”
“I have listened lang aneugh,” said the other, alike ruffled in his turn, “and it comes aye to the same knotted thrum. Ye canna mak a gude job o’t by slicing aff the lords and the puir. Ye might as weel try to fancy a sheep wi’ nae mair body than a king’s-hood and some trollops, without head or trotters.” And James laughed good-naturedly.