WHEN the campaign started the Puto-Congo Consolidation Company was paying its shareholders from 20 to 30 per cent, independent of bonuses which dropped to them like manna every alternate year; and its shares stood in the market at 200 per cent above par. It had held its own against a six months’ exposure of its methods, not only without a drop in the quotations, but with a slight rise when official cold water had been thrown on the report of the egregious Mr. Morment, whose unfair and superficial investigation had caused all the trouble.
But when Mr. Trimblerigg took the matter in hand, hiring halls in all the big towns for monster meetings, and thumping the Free Evangelical war-drum, within a month the shares came tumbling, and the Government had begun to hedge by promising a commission of inquiry—not, as had almost been previously suggested, into the character of Mr. Morment, but into the conduct of the Company.
Even though the world is said to be wicked, it often pays and pays well to be on the side of the angels. For trade and commerce, and politics are largely run on a sort of agreed pretence that man, though now a little lower than the angels, is not much lower, or only in his bad moments, or only because he doesn’t always have time to look into things. The side on which the angels are, may for a time be violently disputed by guilty interests: but give it a clear view-halloo and a sight of its quarry on the run, and you have the great-hearted public up and after it, quite oblivious to its own record in matters closely similar.
So now: the strewings of the feathers of angels’ wings across the landscape made Mr. Trimblerigg’s lightning campaign look like a paper-chase from the heavenly or bird’s-eye view; and tens and hundreds of thousands of virtuous shareholders, in companies of whose ways and doings they did not in the least know or very much care, attended his meetings to denounce the shareholders of a Chartered Company which was paying 20 and 30 per cent upon methods that were now being exposed.
I have said before, and I say again, that Mr. Trimblerigg was a man of absolute sincerity to the convictions of the moment; so also were his audiences, all people of sincerity; but it was a sincerity which, rising to the surface like cream, when it has been skimmed off leaves a poor thin material behind it. But it was national material after all; and how, as somebody once asked, can one indict a great nation? Its greatness is the refuting answer.
And so it was, when those cheering crowds hung upon Mr. Trimblerigg’s eloquence, and when, being so much carried away by it, he hung upon it himself—there was not one, speaker or listener, who, while sincerely denouncing the cruelties which had wrung 20 and 30 per cent profits from the blood and bones of indentured black labour, ever thought of denouncing the system which enabled any who had capital to invest, to make money out of ventures and industries as to the workings of which they knew nothing. It was not the system which was being denounced, but individuals who had been oiling the wheels of the system by methods of civilization pushed to logical extremes. And so, when you strike an average, Mr. Trimblerigg was just as innocent and just as sincere as the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.
The only difference was that nobody else enjoyed his innocence and sincerity as much as he did, or thought so highly of it. For now, being so gloriously upon the side of the angels, it was with the voice of an angel—and a powerful one—that Mr. Trimblerigg spoke. And the angels and the herd-instinct having got hold of him together, he did wonders: not only did he surprise me, he surprised himself.
One day he had before him and behind him, around him and above him, an audience of ten thousand breathless listeners—breathless not for any difficulty, his fine voice being easily heard, but for the mere joy of him. He was making visible to all, the forests and swamps and malarious rivers to which he had never penetrated save with the eye of vision and pity and compassion; and also the things that were being done there for shareholders in a country calling itself Christian. He gave chapter and verse: before him had come a speaker, fresh from the district itself, with terrible lantern-slides, some showing life, many more showing death. As a prelude to his peroration he demanded the last of the slides, one that had been specially reserved for the occasion. It appeared and a great gasp went through the audience; they sat so silent for his concluding words, so motionless that actually not a pin dropped. And after he had ended, for some seconds the silence lasted, so deep was the emotion of his hearers. When he sat down he felt that he had made the speech of his life.
His auditors apparently thought so too, having recovered they stood up for five minutes to applaud, while Mr. Trimblerigg, feeling a little faint but very happy, sat and drank water.
When silence was restored for the announcement of the next speaker—a rather reluctant Archbishop had been captured for the occasion—a cold staccato voice came from the back of the hall: