"Stop!" cried Dick. "I want to grasp it—to think!"
CHAPTER XX
"The Country for the People"
"But you are mad," said the young man at length. "Even if you are right in your diagnosis of the disease from which the country is suffering, if the remedy you suggest is the only one, I am not the man you need. And even if I were, the remedy is impossible. England is not where France was a hundred years ago; she is not where Russia is to-day."
"And you are not a Lenin, a Trotsky, eh?" and Mr. John Brown laughed like a man who had made a joke.
"No, thank Heaven, I am not," and Dick spoke quickly. "I do not believe in the nationalisation of women, neither do I believe in the destruction of the most sacred institutions of life."
"Of course you don't," replied Mr. John Brown, "and I am glad of it. Russia has gone to many excesses which we must avoid. But what can you expect, my friend? After centuries of oppression and persecution, is it any wonder that there has been a swing of the pendulum? The same thing was true of France a hundred years ago. France went wild, France lost her head, and neither Danton nor Robespierre checked the extravagances of the people. But, answer me this. Is not France a thousand times better to-day than when under the Bourbons and the Church? Is not such a Republic as France has, infinitely better than the reign of a corrupt throne, a rotten aristocracy, and a rottener Church? Besides, did not a great part of those who were guillotined deserve their doom?"
"Perhaps they did; but—but the thing is impossible, all the same."