Then he was half a year on strike. He had less food, and less beer, and no music hall. But he had a very great deal less work, and more liberty, and—no "boss".
Men love liberty. It is a love that is bred in the race. They do not love shovelling clay into a barrow, and pushing the barrow up a plank. There is nothing in it that appeals to their humanity: and it is dirty, and laborious, and it makes a man a prisoner and a slave.
Hicks found that the difference between working and loafing was a difference of food, clothing, and beer, on the one hand, and on the other hand, of unpleasant and hard labour.
He found he could do with much less beer and beef, and that liberty was sweet. He did not think this out. He seldom thought: he was never trained to think. But the habit of toil was broken, and the habit of freedom was formed. Also he had found out that he could live without so much toil, and live more pleasantly, if more sparely.
What had changed the free will of Hicks from a will to work to a will to loaf? Change of experience: change of environment.
Now Hicks is as lazy, as useless, and as free as a duke.
But, someone asks, "where was his pride; where was his sense of duty; where was his manhood?" And it seems to me those questions ought to be put to the duke. But I should say that Bill Hicks' pride and sense of duty were just overpowered by his love of liberty, his distaste for soulless toil, and his forgetfulness of the beautiful moral lesson that a man who will not work like a horse for a pound a week is a lazy beast, whilst the man who does nothing—except harm—for a hundred thousand a year, is an honourable gentleman, with a hereditary seat in the House of Peers.
In fact Hicks had found his heredity too strong for his training. But what had free will to do with it?
The duke has a free will. Does it ever set him wheeling clay up a plank? No. Why not? Because, as in the case of Hicks, heredity and environment cause the duke to love some other.
"But the duke has no need to work." That is how Hicks feels. "But Hicks could work if he liked." So could the duke. But neither of these men can "like." That is just what is the matter with them both.