vital principle upon which the men
insisted. The night I drove home from the House I said to Lady
Elisabeth, my niece, that that measure, small though it was, marked a
new era in the social conditions of the country. It did. What I have
commenced, I am prepared to go on with. I am prepared by every logical
and honest means to legislate for labour. I am prepared to legislate in
such a way that the prosperity of the manufacturer, all the
manufacturers in this country, must be shared by the workpeople. I am
prepared to fight, tooth and nail, against twenty per cent dividends on
capital and twenty-five shillings a week wages for the operative. There
are others in the Cabinet of my point of view. In a couple of years we
must go to the country. I am going to the country to ask for a people's
government. Go to Manchester, if you must, but talk common sense to the
people. Let them strike where they are subject to wrongs, and I promise
you that I am on their side, and every pressure that my Government can
bring to bear upon the employers, shall be used in their favour. You
shall win--you as the champion of the men, shall win all along the line.
You shall improve the conditions of every one of those industries in the
north. But--it must be done legitimately and without sinister
complications. I know what is in your mind, Mr. Maraton, quite well.
I know your proposal. It is in your mind to have the railway strike,
the coal strike, the ironfounders' strike, and the strike of the
Lancashire operatives, all take place on the same day. You intend to
lay the country pulseless and motionless. You won't accept terms. You
court disaster--disaster which you refer to as an operation. Don't do
it. Try my way. I offer you certain success. I offer you my alliance,
a seat in Parliament at once, a place in my Government in two years'
time. What more can you ask for? What more can you do for the people
than fight for them side by side with me?"

Maraton had moved a little nearer to the window. He was looking out
into the night. Very faintly now in the distant woods he could still
catch the song of the nightingale. Almost he fancied in the shadows
that he could catch sight of Julia's strained face leaning towards him,
the face of the prophetess, warning him against the easy ways, calling
to him to remember. His principles had been to him a part of his life.
What if he should be wrong? What if he should bring misery and
suffering upon millions upo