e table."

I reminded Margaret that she was not altogether innocent of unearned
increment.

"But aren't we doing our best to give it back?" she said.

I was moved to question her. "Do you really think," I asked, "that the
Tories and peers and rich people are to blame for social injustice as we
have it to-day? Do you really see politics as a struggle of light on the
Liberal side against darkness on the Tory?"

"They MUST know," said Margaret.

I found myself questioning that. I see now that to Margaret it must have
seemed the perversest carping against manifest things, but at the time
I was concentrated simply upon the elucidation of her view and my own; I
wanted to get at her conception in the sharpest, hardest lines that were
possible. It was perfectly clear that she saw Toryism as the diabolical
element in affairs. The thing showed in its hopeless untruth all the
clearer for the fine, clean emotion with which she gave it out to me.
My sleeping peer in the library at Stamford Court and Evesham talking
luminously behind the Hartstein flowers embodied the devil, and my
replete citizen sucking at his cigar in the National Liberal Club,
Willie Crampton discussing the care and management of the stomach over
a specially hygienic lemonade, and Dr. Tumpany in his aggressive
frock-coat pegging out a sort of copyright in Socialism, were the centre
and wings of the angelic side. It was nonsense. But how was I to put the
truth to her?

"I don't see things at all as you do," I said. "I don't see things in
the same way."

"Think of the poor," said Margaret, going off at a tangent.

"Think of every one," I said. "We Liberals have done more mischief
through well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness in the
world could have done. We built up the liquor interest."

"WE!" cried Margaret. "How can you say that? It's against us."

"Naturally. But we made it a monopoly in our clumsy efforts to prevent
people drinking what they liked, because it interfered with industrial
regularity--"

"Oh!" cried Margaret, stung; and I could see she thought I was talking
mere wickedness.

"That's it," I said.

"But would you have people drink whatever they pleased?"

"Certainly. What right have I to dictate to other men and women?"

"But think of the children!"

"Ah! there you have the folly of modern Liberalism, its half-cunning,
half-silly way of getting at everything in a roundabout fashion. If
neglecting children is an o