o clear away the old visionary kindliness on the subject of
vagrants. Hence those reformers enacted not only a new reform bill but
also a new poor law. In creating many other modern things they created
the modern workhouse, and when Dickens came out to fight it was the
first thing that he broke with his battle-axe.

This is where Dickens's social revolt is of more value than mere
politics and avoids the vulgarity of the novel with a purpose. His
revolt is not a revolt of the commercialist against the feudalist, of
the Nonconformist against the Churchman, of the Free-trader against the
Protectionist, of the Liberal against the Tory. If he were among us now
his revolt would not be the revolt of the Socialist against the
Individualist, or of the Anarchist against the Socialist. His revolt was
simply and solely the eternal revolt; it was the revolt of the weak
against the strong. He did not dislike this or that argument for
oppression; he disliked oppression. He disliked a certain look on the
face of a man when he looks down on another man. And that look on the
face is, indeed, the only thing in the world that we have really to
fight between here and the fires of Hell. That which pedants of that
time and this time would have called the sentimentalism of Dickens was
really simply the detached sanity of Dickens. He cared nothing for the
fugitive explanations of the Constitutional Conservatives; he cared
nothing for the fugitive explanations of the Manchester School. He would
have cared quite as little for the fugitive explanations of the Fabian
Society or of the modern scientific Socialist. He saw that under many
forms there was one fact, the tyranny of man over man; and he struck at
it when he saw it, whether it was old or new. When he found that footmen
and rustics were too much afraid of Sir Leicester Dedlock, he attacked
Sir Leicester Dedlock; he did not care whether Sir Leicester Dedlock
said he was attacking England or whether Mr. Rouncewell, the
Ironmaster, said he was attacking an effete oligarchy. In that case he
pleased Mr. Rouncewell, the Iron-master, and displeased Sir Leicester
Dedlock, the Aristocrat. But when he found that Mr. Rouncewell's workmen
were much too frightened of Mr. Rouncewell, then he displeased Mr.
Rouncewell in turn; he displeased Mr. Rouncewell very much by calling
him Mr. Bounderby. When he imagined himself to be fighting old laws he
gave a sort of vague and general approval to new laws. But wh