They can't
check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population
which exists. They daren't give us a comprehensive emigration scheme. They
daren't lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market. They daren't
interfere between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They are
cowards, and like cowards they shall fall!"
"Ay--like cowards they shall fall!" I answered; and from that moment I was
a rebel and a conspirator.
"And will the country join us?"
"The cities will; never mind the country. They are too weak to resist their
own tyrants--and they are too weak to resist us. The country's always
drivelling in the background. A country-party's sure to be a party of
imbecile bigots. Nobody minds them."
I laughed. "It always was so, John. When Christianity first spread, it was
in the cities--till a pagan, a villager, got to mean a heathen for ever and
ever."
"And so it was in the French revolution; when Popery had died out of all
the rest of France, the priests and the aristocrats still found their dupes
in the remote provinces."
"The sign of a dying system that, to be sure.
Pages:
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709