“That may be very true: but nine-tenths of mankind, or at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of those categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.”
This was his first objection, and he proved to be right. At any rate, after some time we dropped the name, and the “Christian Socialist” was changed into the “Journal of Association.” English Socialists generally have instinctively avoided it ever since, and called themselves “co-operators,” thereby escaping much abuse in the intervening years. And when I look back, I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather than attracted men who, like my brother, were inclined theoretically to agree with us. For I am bound to admit that a strong vein of fanaticism and eccentricity ran through our ranks, which the marvellous patience, gentleness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough to counteract or control. Several of our most active and devoted members were also strong vegetarians, and phonetists. In a generation when beards and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant, and almost truculent, tone about us, which was well calculated to keep men of my brother’s temperament at a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its unwisdom when I saw its effects on him, and others, who were inclined to join us, and would have proved towers of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce the evils of unlimited competition, and the falsehood of the economic doctrine of “every man for himself;” but quite unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole system of trade as “the disgusting vice of shop-keeping,” as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest members.
XCVI.
Hardy had a way of throwing life into what he was talking about, and, like many men with strong opinions, and passionate natures, either carried his hearers off their legs and away with him altogether, or roused every spark of combativeness in them. The latter was the effect which his lecture on the Punic Wars had on Tom. He made several protests as Hardy went on; but Grey’s anxious looks kept him from going fairly into action, till Hardy stuck the black pin, which represented Scipio, triumphantly in the middle of Carthage, and, turning round said, “And now for some tea, Grey, before you have to turn out.”
Tom opened fire while the tea was brewing.
“You couldn’t say anything bad enough about aristocracies this morning, Hardy, and now to-night you are crowing over the success of the heaviest and cruelest oligarchy that ever lived, and praising them up to the skies.”
“Hullo! here’s a breeze!” said Hardy, smiling; “but I rejoice, O Brown, in that they thrashed the Carthaginians, and not, as you seem to think, in that they, being aristocrats, thrashed the Carthaginians; for oligarchs they were not at this time.”
“At any rate they answer to the Spartans in the struggle, and the Carthaginians to the Athenians; and yet all your sympathies are with the Romans to-night in the Punic Wars, though they were with the Athenians before dinner.”