"Why, you would make folks kind and good by law then, friend! Hum! I can't see," disputed Tim, again suspending his needle, and looking very metaphysically upon the corner pane of his shop window, "I can't see how that scheme would be likely to succeed. Excuse me, friend, but I think you are talking about may-be's that'll never fly."
"Look ye, now, maister," resumed the tinker, laying down his pipe, raising his hand with the fore-finger pointed, and looking greatly in earnest to substantiate his theory; "this is my point: God Almighty made us all of the same flesh and blood, not some of china and the rest of brown marl: he made us to live like brothers; and if one had better wit than the rest, it was his duty to use it for the benefit of all his brothers and sisters, as well as for his own benefit. So, if a man by money makes money, since he can't do that without the help of other folk, I maintain that that money ought to be distributed, and all that it will buy, for the benefit of all, but more especially for the comfort of those whom the money-maker made use of in making his money."
"You mean, if I understand you," said Tim Swallow-whistle, looking as much like a logician as he knew how, in order to keep the tinker in countenance—"you mean, my friend, that when men with full pockets employ men with empty ones, and by the labour of the poor make their full pockets flow over, there ought to be a fairer division of the profit."
"That's exactly what I mean, maister," answered the tinker, smiling with enthusiasm, "you have hit the nail on the head, completely: I think there ought to be a law, ay, and I think it's more needed than any other law, to prevent the rich from employing the poor just for what wages they please, and to so order things that every man who makes money by other men's labour shall be compelled to give his workmen such a share of his profits as will enable them and their wives and children to live in decency and comfort, instead of rich men being allowed to grow richer and wantoner every day, while their poor slaves go, often, with naked backs and hungry bellies. Ah, maister," concluded the tinker in a tone where the heart was heard, "you know little about the real suffering there is in England; but I can tell you one thing,—and that is, that in the manufacturing places, where this pinch-gut system is most felt, thousands say they won't stand it much longer!"
The tinker ended this speech in a tone of voice so loud that Tim Swallow-whistle felt prompted to look round him for listeners. To his great chagrin, Prim the Puritan stood pricking his ears, but a few yards from Tim's door, with his back turned towards it, but evidently collecting every seditious syllable uttered by the travelling tinker. Tim placed his fore-finger significantly to his lips; and the tinker, marking the direction of Tim's eyes, took the hint, and immediately turned the conversation to the subject of the copper tea-kettle. The tailor's wife was called down-stairs; the kettle was produced; the bargain was readily struck; and the tinker proceeded, out of doors, with his vocation. Tim Swallow-whistle, meanwhile, being left to uninterrupted reflection, turned over and over again, in his mind, the weighty thoughts which had been started by the traveller. Tim could not easily quell the indignation against money-making oppression which the tinker's tale had raised within him; and the plain man's plain reasoning, respecting the rights of the labouring poor, appeared to him uncontradictable; yet all his sympathies for the distressed yielded, at length, to the strength of his common sense, and the consciousness that, care as much as he might, he could not alter the state of the oppressed:—
"The world is as it is," said Tim to himself, mustering up as much wisdom as he was master of; "it has not been right this many a long year, if all that our forefathers said can be true: and, what's worse, one doesn't see much chance of its being speedily set to rights. But what's the use of grumbling at it, day after day? that would only whitter the flesh off one's poor bones. No, no; what the man says is true enough, no doubt," concluded the soliloquising Swallow-whistle; "but I will not make myself uneasy about what I can't mend: at least I won't any further than I can help. Let the world wag! I'll try to make myself as easy as I can in it, with all its awkwardness. Every dog has his day,—and perhaps mine will come yet."
This was no elevated moral channel in which Tim's thoughts were running when the tinker re-entered; but it was one which had served to drain Tim's heart from the troublous inundation of discontent, amid the toils and difficulties of his whole mature life. Tim invited the tinker to take another pipe, and entered on the old subject in a way that showed his mind was made up.
"Well, my good friend," he began, "I have been thinking about what has fallen to your lot to see; and I must take the liberty to tell you, that although I cannot help feeling grieved for the distress of others, yet I very much doubt the wisdom of a man dwelling on these thoughts of sorrow till he feels a disposition to be discontented with every thing around him."
"So do I, maister," chimed in the tinker, interrupting Tim,—"so do I: but when one sees and hears of things that one knows to be wrong, one can hardly prevent one's sen, you know, from turning 'em over in one's mind, and trying to think how they could be righted. I'm not a man given to low spirits, mysen, maister; I contrive to keep my heart up, and go on; though I don't think the world's quite right, for all that."
"I'm glad to hear what you said just now," continued Tim: "I assure you I've some little rough usage to bear; but I always find cheerfulness, and a disposition to make the best o'things, by far the wisest way of living."