“And therefore aim to improve the laws,” said Mr. Clare so quietly that his remark did not seem an interruption.
“Eh! improve? you’ll never improve away the distinction between rich and poor, or the laws that protect property.”
“God forbid—the last,” said Mr. Clare. “What we aim at is to make property—outside of what we now call personalties—really stable and secure, by making the Nation, and not any private individual, its owner.”
“Tut, tut, what nonsense! I beg your pardon, Mr. Clare; but, really, to hear a man of your intellect, in this age of the world”—
“And exactly because it is this age of the world,” said the clergyman, laughing. “Why, Mr. Randolph, a man of your intellect ought to recognize the spirit of the times. Would you have us go back to mediævalism, every man his own sovereign,—barring an act or so of empty homage,—as well as his own postman, policeman, scavenger, and lamplighter?”
“We are civilized rather beyond that point, sir; besides, it has nothing to do with the subject in hand.”
“Nevertheless, the day will come when ‘every man his own bread-winner and property-holder’ will be equally a relic of barbarism,” said Mr. Clare coolly.
“Not in my time, sir, or yours.”
“Why, a certain English magazine I was reading, the other day, was disposed to assign it to the date of the Greek Kalends; but I don’t feel so sure about that,” said Ernest Clare. “Though it might be correct enough for England providing America had never been discovered. John Bull is a conservative animal; he has been beaten and pulled alternately by the horns and tail until he has learned to say ‘A;’ and is now fully persuaded that ‘A’ is the only correct thing to say; and that any one who says ‘B’ is revolutionary, immoral, and un-English. But Brother Jonathan, once he has learned to say ‘A,’ is more than half prepared to say ‘B,’ and will be positively eager about the remainder of the alphabet; so ‘the coming of the Coqcigrues’ may be nearer than we dream,” he ended, smiling.
“May I go in to see Freddy?” asked Louis, turning to Alice.