“You have greatly solved the problem of the poor by taking them from the crowded centres of great cities.”
“Yes; I do not think we could have accomplished all that has been done excepting in this way. I know of more than four hundred manufacturers who have taken their people and their work away from big towns to little villages—where land is cheaper and the air is fresh—and there have helped them to begin life again under new conditions. In this way numbers become quite manageable. Every man, woman, and child is known to the master and the mistress, who are now awake to their responsibility, and understand that if they employ people it is their duty to look after them and care for them. I believe there is not a Christian man in England to-day who regards his employés merely as hands to earn money for him.”
“Thank God!”
“Yes, indeed, we have reason to thank God. There has been a great awakening of the individual conscience in the Church.”
“We in America consider your latest liquor law rather severe.”
“We have had to be severe in order to be kind,” said Dr. Stapleton. “The Legislature was resolved to stamp out drunkenness at any cost; and I believe it is in a fair way to be accomplished now. We never required so few prisons as we do now; and it was a good idea to use them as refuges for drunkards, and compel every man or woman who had been thrice convicted of drunkenness to live in them.”
“This has been a marvellously executive year,” said Mr. Emerson. “It has been like a dream. Only a few years ago, and at every Christmas time there were numbers of men out of work, and some nearly starving, and now there is work for every man who likes to do it.”
“And, what is almost better still, every man has to work whether he likes it or not,” said Mr. Stapleton.
“You nearly had a revolution over that thing, though,” said the American. “The liberty of the subject was in danger.”
“Yes; only a Government that knew its own strength could have given such an excellent definition of liberty as ours has,” replied Mr. Whitwell. “Every man has liberty to do right, but no one has licence to do that which is evil.”