and then Mr. Forbes spoke: "I should like
our legal appointments to include advocates of the poor, men of
integrity whose business it would be to watch over the rights and listen
to the grievances of those classes who live by laborious work and are
helpless to resist powerful wrong. Old truth bears repeating: these are
the classes who maintain the state of the world--the laborer that holds
the plough and whose talk is of bullocks, the carpenter, the smith, and
the potter. All these trust to their hands, and are wise in their work,
and when oppression comes they must seek to some one of leisure for
justice. It is a pitiful thing to hear a poor man plead, 'Sir, what can
I do?' when his heart burns with a sense of intolerable wrong, and to
feel that the best advice you can give him is that he should bear it
patiently."

"I call that too sentimental on your part, Forbes," remonstrated Mr.
Chiverton. "The laborers are quiet yet, and guidable as their own oxen,
but look at the trades--striking everywhere. Surely your smiths and
carpenters are proving themselves strong enough to protect their own
interests."

"Yes, by the combination that we should all deprecate amongst our
laborers--only by that. Therefore the wise will be warned in time, for
such example is contagious. Many of our people have lain so long in
discontent that bitter distrust has come of it, and they are ready to
abandon their natural leaders for any leader who promises them more
wages and less toil. If the laborers strike, Smith's and Fairfax's will
probably stick to their furrows, and Gifford's will turn upon him--yours
too, Chiverton, perhaps." Mr. Forbes was very bold.

"God forbid that we should come to that!" exclaimed Mr. Fairfax
devoutly. "We have all something to mend in our ways. Our view of the
responsibility that goes with the possession of land has been too
narrow. If we could put ourselves in the laborer's place!"

"I shall mend nothing: no John Hodge shall dictate to me," cried Mr.
Chiverton in a sneering fury. "A man has a right to do what he likes
with his own, I presume?"

"No, he has not; and especially not when he calls a great territory in
land his own," said Mr. Forbes. "That is the false principle out of
which the bad practice of some of you arises. A few have never been
guided by it--they have acted on the ancient law that the land is the
Lord's, and the profit of the land for all--and many more begin to
acknowledge that it is a f