omen-flogger,' as he was called by
the people--had to leave these shores without remedy.

"He returned to his own country and settled upon his estate at Szekeres,
which is close to the commune above-mentioned. By his will the estate
passed to his daughter, after whose death it was to be presented to the
commune. This daughter has just died, but the Communal Council, after
much deliberation, has declined to accept the gift, and ordered that
the estate should be left to fall out of cultivation, and be called the
'Bloody Meadow.'"

Now that is an example of how things happen under an honest democratical
impulse. I do not dwell specially on the earlier part of the story,
though the earlier part of the story is astonishingly interesting.
It recalls the days when Englishmen were potential lighters; that is,
potential rebels. It is not for lack of agonies of intellectual anger:
the Sultan and the late King Leopold have been denounced as heartily as
General Haynau. But I doubt if they would have been physically thrashed
in the London streets.

It is not the tyrants that are lacking, but the draymen. Nevertheless,
it is not upon the historic heroes of Barclay, Perkins and Co. that
I build all my hope. Fine as it was, it was not a full and perfect
revolution. A brewer's drayman beating an eminent European General
with a stick, though a singularly bright and pleasing vision, is not
a complete one. Only when the brewer's drayman beats the brewer with
a stick shall we see the clear and radiant sunrise of British
self-government. The fun will really start when we begin to thump the
oppressors of England as well as the oppressors of Hungary. It is,
however, a definite decline in the spiritual character of draymen that
now they can thump neither one nor the other.

But, as I have already suggested, my real quarrel is not about the first
part of the extract, but about the second. Whether or no the draymen
of Barclay and Perkins have degenerated, the Commune which includes
Szekeres has not degenerated. By the way, the Commune which includes
Szekeres is called Kissekeres; I trust that this frank avowal will
excuse me from the necessity of mentioning either of these places again
by name. The Commune is still capable of performing direct democratic
actions, if necessary, with a stick.

I say with a stick, not with sticks, for that is the whole argument
about democracy. A people is a soul; and if you want to know what a soul
is, I can