“That is not all,” proceeded Mr. James Welsh. “Lord Lamerton innocently—I will not say, sheepishly—asks, Is that all? No, I reply, and I reply as the mouth-piece of all present, as the shout of the democracy of England. It is not all. It is very far from being all. Is that all? he asks, standing before you, out of whose mouths he has snatched the crust of bread, the staff of life. Is that all? When he closes the manganese mine, and throws almost the entire population of Orleigh out of employ, and scatters them everywhere, hungry, homeless, forlorn.”
“Now, this is a trifle too extravagant,” said Lord Lamerton. “The mine would have gone under my house and brought it down. Why, it would have cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the house.”
“You hear that! Twenty thousand pounds which might have been spent in Orleigh is refused the people. Twenty thousand pounds! How many able-bodied men are there in Orleigh? About two hundred. What might you not have done with a hundred pounds each? What comforts might you not have provided yourselves with? But his lordship buttons up his pockets. Look upon yourselves, each of you, as defrauded of a hundred pounds. My lord will bank his twenty thousand. He does not want it. He hoards it. He fossilizes it. There is a fable about a dog in the manger which snarled at the horses that wanted to eat out of that manger which was of no use at all to the hound.”
Then Lord Lamerton raised his voice, and said, “My good friends, I don’t believe you are so weak as to be gulled by these fallacies. Why should I allow my house to be undermined and rattled down about my ears, if I can help it?”
A voice from the throng shouted, “Good for trade.”
“Some one has said,” continued Lord Lamerton, “some one has remarked that it would be good for trade. I dispute this. I deny it energetically. I say that it would cost me twenty thousand pounds to rebuild the place, but I do not say that—if ousted by the manganese mine, I would rebuild it. Why should I? If I built on any rock, how could I tell but that some vein of metal would again be found under it, and then I might be driven away once more. Or if I built on clay, some company might insist on exploring the clay for aluminium; or if I built on gravel, it might be insisted on to under-dig me for coprolites, for the formation of artificial manure. Why, I say, should I risk my twenty thousand pounds when my very foundations are no security for the outlay? I would say to myself: As there is no security any where, I will spend my twenty thousand pounds in amusing myself on the Continent, on personal jewellery—or God knows what selfish luxuries. Security of property, unassailability of right of property, that is the basis of all prosperity in trade. Touch property, and down goes trade with it. Look at the Jews in past times. They had no security, so they hoarded, and never spent a farthing they could not help. They did nothing for trade with their wealth. Touch property, and no one with money will do other than did the Jews. Touch property, and down goes trade.” Lord Lamerton thumped the table. “Now look here, I don’t want to be hard on any one. I have lost a great deal of money already on the manganese, which has not paid for these five years, but has been worked at a dead loss. I don’t see my way to lose more, and to endanger, moreover, the walls of my house. That is plain sense. But as I say, I won’t be hard on any one. If the miners cannot get work elsewhere, I’ll set them road-making. They can cut a new road as soon as ever it is settled where the station is to be, and hedge and stone it. That will cost me a thousand pounds, if it will cost me a penny.”
“Just listen to this proposal,” shouted Welsh, who found that the plain sense of Lord Lamerton was producing some effect. “You hear his lordship’s magnanimous offer. He will take you honest, hearty, active mining fellows and debase you to stone-breakers by a road-side. He has had such experience in heart-breaking, that he thinks to set you a job that commends itself to his fancy—stone-breaking. But let us pass from this. I have not done with my noble lord yet. Not by any means. The last of his misdeeds is not yet quite exhausted. I want to ask the Right Honourable Baron Lamerton how it is that he is so sensitive about the tumbling down of his own house, and so ready by the hands of his Macduffs and other minions to tear down the walls of the widow’s cottage? I ask him that. See—he is confounded, he cannot answer.” Welsh looked round triumphantly. “Nor is that all,” he pursued; “I have another question to put, to which also, I have no doubt, I shall meet with silence only as an answer. His lordship who is so touchy about the rights of property is, I suspect, only touchy about the rights of his own property. I have it on the best possible authority that he is threatening to dispossess a man whom we all esteem, Captain Saltren, to dispossess him of his house and land, a house built by his father and repaired and beautified by himself. I believe I am not wrong in saying that he has threatened to employ law against our valued friend, Captain Saltren.”
A cry of “Shame, shame!”
“Yes,” pursued the orator, “it is shame. What was that his lordship said just now about rights of property? Touch property, he insisted, and down goes trade. Who is touching property. Who but he? Who lays his envious grasp—he, Ahab, on the vineyard of the poor Naboth.”
Then the orator jumped off the table, and in a changed tone said to Lord Lamerton, “I must be off and report this meeting. I’ve a train to catch. Give you a leader on it, old cock. No offence meant; none I hope taken. Both of us men of the world, and know how to live by it. I know as well as you what is gammon, but gammon is the staple diet of the chawbacon. Give us your hand.” He nudged the nobleman in the side. “Bamboozled, my lord, eh? I am James Welsh. Pretty considerably bamboozled, eh?”