s have no reserves of property
with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion
with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are
under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it.
They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices.
They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen
property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to
her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved
to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and
as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a
child deprived of her doll. Indeed, a child in the street, crying for
her lost doll, would probably receive more sympathy than she does.

Meanwhile the fun goes on; and many such conflicts are recorded, even
in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking
philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any
number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be
flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather
fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I
know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives of
sincere but confused compassion, and many more from a dull but not
dishonourable medical or legal habit. But if I and those who agree
with me tend to some harshness and abruptness of condemnation, these
worthy people need not be altogether impatient with our impatience. It
is surely beneath them, in the scope of their great schemes, to
complain of protests so ineffectual about wrongs so individual. I have
considered in this chapter the chances of general democratic defence
of domestic honour, and have been compelled to the conclusion that
they are not at present hopeful; and it is at least clear that we
cannot be founding on them any personal hopes. If this conclusion
leaves us defeated, we submit that it leaves us disinterested. Ours is
not the sort of protest, at least, that promises anything even to the
demagogue, let alone the sycophant. Those we serve will never rule,
and those we pity will never rise. Parliament will never be surrounded
by a mob of submerged grandmothers brandishing pawn-tickets. There is
no trade union of defective children. It is not very probable that
modern government will be overturned by a few poor dingy devils who
are sent to prison by mistake, or rather