rest of the land, it is the
shopkeeper's loyalty, which is to be computed by the exact annual sum of
his net profits. It is now at high tide. It will last with the prosperity
of our commerce."--The insolent old vagabond!--"Let commercial disasters
come on us, and what of the loyalty now paying its hundreds of thousands,
and howling down questioners! In a day of bankruptcies, how much would
you bid for the loyalty of a class shivering under deprivation of
luxuries, with its God Comfort beggared? Ay, my Beauchamp,"--the most
offensive thing to me is that "my Beauchamp," but old Nevil has evidently
given himself up hand and foot to this ruffian--"ay, when you reflect
that fear of the so-called rabble, i.e. the people, the unmoneyed class,
which knows not Comfort, tastes not of luxuries, is the main component of
their noisy frigid loyalty, and that the people are not with them but
against, and yet that the people might be won by visible forthright
kingly service to a loyalty outdoing theirs as the sun the moon; ay, that
the people verily thirst to love and reverence; and that their love is
the only love worth having, because it is disinterested love, and
endures, and takes heat in adversity,--reflect on it and wonder at the
inversion of things! So with a Church. It lives if it is at home with the
poor. In the arms of enriched shopkeepers it rots, goes to decay in
vestments--vestments! flakes of mummy-wraps for it! or else they use it
for one of their political truncheons--to awe the ignorant masses: I
quote them. So. Not much ahead of ancient Egyptians in spirituality or in
priestcraft! They call it statesmanship. O for a word for it! Let Palsy
and Cunning go to form a word. Deadmanship, I call it."--To quote my
uncle the baron, this is lunatic dribble!--"Parsons and princes are happy
with the homage of this huge passive fleshpot class. It is enough for
them. Why not? The taxes are paid and the tithes. Whilst commercial
prosperity lasts!"'

Colonel Halkett threw his arms aloft.

'"Meanwhile, note this: the people are the Power to come.
Oppressed, unprotected, abandoned; left to the ebb and flow of the
tides of the market, now taken on to work, now cast off to starve,
committed to the shifting laws of demand and supply, slaves of
Capital-the whited name for old accursed. Mammon: and of all the.
ranked and black-uniformed host no pastor to come out of the
association of shepherds, and proclaim before hea