Chapter 43 - Page 2

goods, while others have too much. What more fair, more simple, than that he should take some of the rich man's goods, and if he resists, kill him, crying, "Thou sayest, let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. Then I too will eat and drink, for to-morrow I die?" And so will the rich and poor meet together with a vengeance, simply because neither of them has learnt that the Lord is the maker of them all.

This is a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms.

I said a modicum of alms. I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any amount of charity. Throughout the great cities of Europe--in London as much as anywhere--hundreds of thousands are saying, "We want no alms. We intend to reconstitute society, even at the expense of blood, so that no man, woman, or child, shall need the rich man's alms. We do not choose, for it is not just, that he should take credit to himself for giving us a shilling when he owes us a pound, ten, a hundred pounds--owes us, in fact, all by which he and his class are richer than us and our class. And we will make him pay his debt."

I do not say that such words are wise. I believe them to be foolish-- suicidal. I believe that it is those who patiently wait on the Lord, and not the discontented who fret themselves till they do evil, who will inherit the land, and be refreshed in peace. I believe that all those who take the sword will perish by the sword; that those who appeal to brute force will always find it--just because it is brute force--always strongest on the side of the rich, who can hire it for evil, as for good.

I only say, that so hundreds of thousands think; so they speak, and will speak more and more loudly, as long as the present tone of society endures,--good-natured and well meaning, but luxurious, covetous, ignoble, frivolous, ignorant; believing--all classes alike, not only that money makes the man, but worse far--that money makes the woman also; and all the while half-ashamed of itself, half-distrustful of itself, and trying to buy off man by alms, and God by superstition.

So long as the great mass of the poor of any city know nothing of the great mass of the rich of that city, save as folk who roll past them in their carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, seemingly happy while they are wretched, so long will the rich of that city be supposed, however falsely, to be what the French workmen used to call mangeurs d'hommes--exploiteurs d'hommes--to get their wealth by means of the poverty, their comfort by means of the misery of their fellow-men; and so long will they be exposed to that mere envy and hatred which pursues always the more prosperous, till, in some national crisis, when the rich and poor meet together, both parties will be but too apt to behave, through mutual