ing! And then to come to the real point,
Mannering. Grant for a moment all that you have told Borrowdean and
myself about the condition of the labour classes in the great towns and
the universal depression of trade. How can you possibly imagine that the
imposition of tariff duties is the sovereign, or even a possible, remedy?
Why, you yourself have been one of the most brilliant pamphleteers
against anything of the sort. You have been called the Cobden of the day.
You cannot throw principles away like an old garment."

"Let us leave for one moment," Mannering answered, "the personal side of
the matter. I have seen in the majority of our large cities terrible and
convincing proof of the decline of our manufacturing industries. I have
seen the outcome of this in hundreds of ruined homes, in a whole
generation coming into the world half starved, half clothed--God help
those children. I have always maintained that the labouring classes
should be the happiest race of people in this country. I find them
without leisure or recreation, fighting fate with both hands for food.
Redford, the whole world has never shown us a greater tragedy than the
one which we others deliberately and persistently close our eyes to--I
mean the struggle for life which is being waged in every one of our great
cities."

"We have statistics," Borrowdean began.

"Damn statistics!" Mannering interrupted. "I have juggled with figures
myself in the old days, and I know how easy it is. So do you, and so does
Redford. This is what I want to put to you. The tragedy is there. Perhaps
those who have faced it and come back again to tell of their experiences
have been a little hysterical--the horror of it has carried them away.
They may not have adopted the most effectual means of making the world
understand, but it is there. I have seen it. A thousandth part of this
misery in a country with which we had nothing to do, and no business to
interfere, and we should be having mass meetings at Exeter Hall, and
making general asses of ourselves all over the country, shrieking for
intervention, wasting a whole dictionary of rhetoric, and probably
getting well snubbed for our pains. And because the murders are by slow
poison instead of with steel, because they are in our own cities and
amongst our own people, we accept them with a sort of placid
satisfaction. You, Lord Redford, speak of character and enunciate social
laws, and Borrowdean will argue that after all the t