第31章

This brings me to objection number two.It is stated that this Association sets class against class.Is this so? (CRIES OF"No.") No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to reconcile them.I wish to avoid placing in opposition those two words - Aristocracy and People.I am one who can believe in the virtues and uses of both, and would not on any account deprive either of a single just right belonging to it.I will use, instead of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed.These two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which are lying, newly-buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and most devoted men that even England ever bred.It is to prevent the recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice and supported by common sense.Setting class against class! That is the very parrot prattle that we have so long heard.Try its justice by the following example:- A respectable gentleman had a large establishment, and a great number of servants, who were good for nothing, who, when he asked them to give his children bread, gave them stones; who, when they were told to give those children fish, gave them serpents.When they were ordered to send to the East, they sent to the West; when they ought to have been serving dinner in the North, they were consulting exploded cookery books in the South; who wasted, destroyed, tumbled over one another when required to do anything, and were bringing everything to ruin.At last the respectable gentleman calls his house steward, and says, even then more in sorrow than in anger, "This is a terrible business; no fortune can stand it - no mortal equanimity can bear it! I must change my system; I must obtain servants who will do their duty." The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror, ejaculates "Good God, master, you are setting class against class!"and then rushes off into the servants' hall, and delivers a long and melting oration on that wicked feeling.