CHAPTER XXXV. THEN WE'LL KEEP COMPANY.
After the celebrated debate on the abolition of the Lords, Dick Coppin found that he took for the moment a greatly diminished interest in burning political questions. He lost, in fact, confidence in himself, and went about with hanging head. The Sunday evening meetings were held as usual, but the fiery voice of Dick the Radical was silent, and people wondered. This was the effect of his cousin's address upon him. As for the people, it had made them laugh, just as Dick's had made them angry. They came to the Hall to get these little emotions, and not for any personal or critical interest in the matter discussed; and this was about all the effect produced by them.
One evening the old Chartist who had taken the chair met Dick at the club.
"Come out," he said, "come out and have a crack while the boys wrangle."
They walked from Redman's Lane, where the club stands, to the quiet side pavement of Stepney Green, deserted now because the respectable people were all in church, and it was too cold for the lounging of the more numerous class of those who cannot call themselves respectable. The ex-Chartist belonged, like Daniel Fagg, to the shoemaking trade in its humbler lines. The connection between leather and Socialism, Chartism, Radicalism, Atheism, and other things detrimental to old institutions, has frequently been pointed out, and need not be repeated. It is a reflecting trade, and the results of meditation are mainly influenced by the amount of knowledge the meditation brings with it. In this respect the Chartist of thirty years ago had a great advantage over his successors of the present day, for he had read. He knew the works of Owen, of Holyoke, and of Cobbett. He understood something of what he wanted, and why he wanted it. The proof of which is that they have got all they wanted, and we still survive.
When next the people make up their minds that they want another set of things they will probably get them, too.
"Let us talk," he said. "I've been thinking a bit about that chap's speech the other night—I wanted an answer to it."