Another curious circumstance gave me food for thought in the midst of my host’s showy apothegms. It was the somewhat remarkable silence of his good friend and secretary. Herr Bleisst sometimes nodded, occasionally shrugged, and often smiled, but it was not until dinner was more than half over that he contributed anything audible to the conversation. And even then he seemed to speak by mistake. The Count was favouring me with his opinion on the respective advantages of an autocratic and a democratic government, and supporting his preference for the former by his usual method of highly coloured argument. He even went so far as to assert that the autocratic rule gave greater freedom to the people than they could get by governing themselves.
“Now, in England,” he said, “you think yourselves absolutely free, is it not so?” I bowed assent. “And yet,” he proceeded, “a moment’s reflection should convince you that so far from this being the case, there is, if I may speak without offence, more slavery in England than in any other country. Take one section. What do you call a snob: is not that merely another name for a slave?”
“It is voluntary servitude,” I suggested.
“Granted,” he replied. “But none the less real and constraining. Then a stronger case is the liberty which your boasted freedom gives to one class of men to make slaves of another; to the strong to coerce the weak, the rich the poor. You smile! Surely you will not dispute that?”
My smile had been called up by the thought of a power used by the strong against the weak under a certain despotic government, which put the worst crimes of plutocracy into the shade. But it did not seem expedient just then to cite instances.
“At least the weak and the poor are at liberty to refuse to be enslaved,” I answered by way of saying something. “In an autocratically governed country it is slavery or death, with not always the option of slavery.”
The Count returned my smile with interest. “A very apt description of your sweating dens in London.”
Then it was that Bleisst spoke, giving an extra clinch to his patron’s argument.
“Where,” said he, “does this liberty to refuse slavery lead? To the workhouse, which is undisguised servitude, with the prospect of a slave’s only ransomer, death.”
The surprise with which I looked at the secretary was not occasioned altogether by the novelty of the remark from his lips, but from the impression that I had heard his voice before. Yes, it was beyond doubt familiar, and so preoccupied was I by the coincidence, that I fear I let my ingenious host carry off the honours of the argument against my country. I was still puzzling over the identity of Herr Bleisst, and scrutinizing him as attentively as good manners allowed, when I was recalled to the exigency of the situation by the Count’s inviting me to try some of the dish of sweetmeats before me.