“What is all this about?” repeated the orator. “His noble lordship, the Right Honourable Giles Inglett, Baron Lamerton, asks, What is all this about?” In a lower tone charged with oratorical irony, “What is all this about?” Mr. Welsh looked round on his audience. “Having shut up his manganese mine, and reduced a hundred men to destitution, broken up their homes, obliged them to wander over the face of the earth in quest of work, without houses of their own, without bread to put into the mouths of their children, forced to sell their poor sticks of furniture down to the baby’s cradle—he asks, What is all this about? After having torn down a house over the head of a poor widow, and bespattered her grey hairs with gore, he asks, What is all this about? After having deprived a father of his only child, and an orphan of her mother, he has the effrontery—yes—in the face of his lordship I repeat the word, I repeat it in the boldness which my righteous indignation gives me—the effrontery to ask, What is all this about? Possibly, when Cain saw his brother, his younger brother Abel, lying at his feet, with fractured skull and crushed limbs, he also asked, What is all this about? I will not pretend to know where his lordship has been all day; but I do say that, as an Englishman, as a Christian, as a man, when he was about to render desolate the heart of a father by taking the life of his only son, and of a child by bereaving her of her mother, when he was about to tear the roof off from over the head of the widow and the fatherless, he should have been here, yes, here and not far away—Heaven knows where—in what scene of riot and revelry, into which decent folk like us would not venture to look.”
“Now come,” said Lord Lamerton, “this is all rubbish. I have been at a ploughing match. I want to know what you are doing here. Who the deuce are you?”
“My lord,” said the orator, “I am—I rejoice to say it—one of the People, one of the down-trodden and ill-treated, the excluded from the good things of life. My heart, my lord, beats in the right place. Where yours is, my lord, it is not for me, it is for your own conscience to decide. But mine, mine—is in the right place. I am one of the people, and my lord, let me inform you that when you insult me, you insult the entire people of England; you bespatter not me only, but the whole of that enlightened, hearty, intelligent people, of whom I see so many noble, generous specimens before me—you bespatter them, I repeat, my lord, you bespatter them in the grossest and most unwarranted fashion—with dirt.”
“’Pon my soul,” interrupted Lord Lamerton, rapping on the table, “I can make no heads nor tails out of all this. If you have anything against me, say it out. If you want anything, tell it me plainly. I am not unreasonable, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to all this rigmarole.”
“Perhaps, my lord, you are not aware, that there are many grievances under which the Public, the Public, my lord, are groaning. Shall I begin with the lighter, and proceed to the graver, or reverse the process?”
“As you please. It is one to me.”
“Very well,” said Welsh. He looked round complacently on his audience, and rubbed his hands. “His lordship, in all simplicity of heart, wants to know what occasion he has given for this indignation. What occasion,” with a chuckle, and those who could see his face and catch his tone chuckled also. “What occasion,” with sarcasm, and his audience felt their gall rise. “What occasion,” in a hollow thrilling tone, and the crowd responded with a groan. “Shall we tell his lordship? We will, and we will begin with some of the lighter grievances, heavy in themselves, but light in comparison with the others. In the first place, what does he mean by throwing open the grounds on a Tuesday, a day when the public, as he knows, the hard-working public which needs relaxation and the sight of the beautiful, cannot enjoy the boon? Is that, I ask, a day when the shops are closed? Is it a day when the sons of toil in our cities can get away from their labours and admire the beauties of nature, and the charms of art? It is not. The grounds are thrown open on Tuesdays, with almost fiendish malevolence and the cunning of the serpent, that his lordship may obtain the credit of liberality, whilst doing nothing to deserve it. The true public are excluded by the selection of the day, but the gentle-folks, the parsons, the squires, and all the do-nothings, to whom one day is as another, they can see Orleigh Park on Tuesdays. If Lord Lamerton had in him any true humanity, any sympathy for the tradesman, for the clerk, for the milliner and the seamstress, he would open on—let us say Saturday.”
“Very well,” said Lord Lamerton, “I have no objection in the world, except that it will give the gardeners more to do, picking up the papers and scraps—henceforth the grounds shall be open to the public on Saturdays.”
“But, my lord, are the pictures and statuary and other works of art to be shown only to the aristocratic eye and are they to be carefully kept within closed doors from the profane gaze of what you contemptuously call—The Common People?”
“Not at all,” said Lord Lamerton. “I will order that the state apartments be opened on Saturdays—though, Lord knows, above a questionable Van Dyck, there are no great shakes in the way of pictures there. Is that all?”