nd he had been
a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to
these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply
interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions,
and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on
other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a
grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the
inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to
him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man,
who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's
arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and
fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man,
who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech.
There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired
to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who
disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could
possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first
trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation
of facts. More than once--many times indeed--he had to interpose and
explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were
discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them
if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which
they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured
them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor
fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own
peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was
never impatient--but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had
the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in
their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be
able to do?'

More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your
grievances--admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense
of your demands, what can _I_ do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no
legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which
until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'

The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of
him as of one who had risen to supreme position in