"But," I answered, "if the fellow happens to have a good memory he may recall the fact that yesterday you took two shillings from him, and he may think that the proper response to your sudden act of generosity is, 'Where's that other shilling?' That's what the Spirit of Democracy puts him up to. It's not so polite, but you must admit that it goes right to the point."
"I don't like it," said Scrooge.
"I thought you wouldn't. There are a great many people who don't like it. It's a twitting on facts that takes away a good deal of the pleasure of being generous."
"I should say it did," grumbled Scrooge. "It makes you feel mean just when you are most sensitive. Just think how I should have felt if, when I gave Bob Cratchit a dig in the waistcoat and told him that I had raised his salary, he had taken the opportunity to ask for back pay. It would have been most inopportune."
"You owed it to him, didn't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I did, if you choose to put it that way. But Bob wouldn't have put it that way; he wouldn't take such liberties. He took what I gave him; and when I gave him more than he expected, he was all the happier, and so was I. That's what made it all seem so nice and Christmasy. We were not thinking about rights and duties; it was all free grace."
"Now, Scrooge, you are getting at the point. There is no concealing the fact that the Spirit of Democracy makes himself unpleasant sometimes. He breaks up the old pleasant relations existing not only between the Lords and the Commons, but between you and Bob Cratchit. Man is naturally a superstitious creature, and is prone to worship the first thing that comes in his way. When a poor fellow sees a person who is better off than himself, he jumps to the conclusion that he is a better man, and bows down before him, as before a wonder-working Providence. When this Providence smiles upon him, he is glad, and receives the bounty with devout thankfulness. It is what the old theologians used to call 'an uncovenanted mercy.'
"All this is very pleasant to one who can sign himself by the grace of God king, or president of a coal company, or some such thing as that. The gratification extends to all the minor grades of greatness as well. The great man is ordained to give as it pleases him and the little men to receive with due meekness. The great man is always the man who has something. I suppose, Scrooge, that in your busy life, first scraping money together and then dispensing it in your joyous Christmasy way, you have not had much time for general reading or even for listening to sermons?"
"I have always attended Divine Service since my conversion," answered Scrooge, piously; "as for listening—"
"What I was going to say was that if you had attended to such matters, you must have noticed how much of the literature of good-will is devoted to the praise of the Blessed Inequalities. How the changes are rung on the Strong and the Weak, the Wise and the Ignorant, the Rich and the Poor; especially the Poor, who form the hub of the philanthropic universe. Nobody seems to meet another on the level. Everybody is either looking up or looking down, and they are taught how to do it. I remember attending the annual meeting of the Society for the Relief of Indigent Children. The indigent children were first fed and then insulted by a plethoric gentleman, who addressed to them a long discourse on indigence and the various duties that it entailed. And no one of the children was allowed to throw things at the speaker. They had all been taught to look grateful.