“Well, but——”
“Well, but by G—d, he’s got you there!” the Duke cried, and smacked his fat thigh in triumph. “We’ve some sense i’ Riddsley yet. Here’s your health and song, Dr. Pepper!” At which there was some laughter.
“Well, sir, I’ll not say yes, nor no, to that,” the Lancashire man replied, as soon as he could get a hearing. “But, gentlemen, it’s not low wages we want. I’ll tell you the two things we do want, and why we want cheap bread; first, that your laborers after they have bought bread may have something over to buy our woollens, and our cottons, and your pots. And secondly, if we don’t take foreign wheat in payment how are foreigners to pay for our goods?”
But at this half a dozen were up in arms. “How?” cried the Duke, “why wi’ money like honest men at home! But there it is! There’s the devil’s hoof! It’s foreign corn you’re after! And with foreign corn coming in at forty shillings where’ll we be?”
“No wheat will ever be grown at that price,” declared the free trader with solemnity, “here or abroad!”
“So you say!” cried Hayward. “But put it at forty-five. We’ll be on the rates, and our laborers, where’ll they be?”
“I don’t like such talk in my house!” said Musters.
“I’d certainly like an answer to that,” Pepper the surgeon said. “If the farmers are broke where’ll their laborers be but flocking to your mills to put down wages there!”
“The laborers? Well, they’re protected now, that’s true.”
“Lucky for them!” cried two or three.