considered and judged day by day by those who had the power to shake or
overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty was
making our industrial civilization stir like a quaking bog. He reminded
them that their assumption that they were answerable to themselves alone
for their actions in the industries they controlled was becoming less
and less tolerable, in a world so crowded with necessitous life; but
what he chiefly held them responsible for was their incompetence as
commercial men, because, with the cheapest market in the world at their
command, they could never invite the confidence of investors.

What was even worse than their business incompetence, however, was,
according to "AE.," their bad citizenship, for had they not allowed the
poor to be herded together so that one could only think of certain
places in Dublin as of a pestilence?

"There are twenty thousand rooms in Dublin," continued the terrible
indictment, "in each of which live entire families and sometimes more,
where no functions of the body can be concealed, and delicacy and
modesty are creatures that are stifled ere they are born." In fact,
"nothing that had ever been done against them cried so much to heaven
for vengeance as their own actions, such as the terrible lock-out, which
threw nearly a third of the whole city on to the verge of starvation";
and he concluded:--

"You are sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry. There was
autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So
surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The
fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the
aristocracy of land, if you do not show that you have some humanity
still among you."

It was from such roots that the spirit of the Citizens' Army drew its
inspiration (and possibly not a few of the looters as well), and it is
impossible to understand the rage of these men without fully
comprehending the condition in which they were compelled to live and
move.

True, the revolt was not with any concrete economic end in view; but,
none the less, it was coloured throughout with economic grievances.

It was the very torture of the ordinary conditions of peace that made
them resent the fear of any additional burdens and sacrifices such as
were demanded of their patriotism.

Yet what did patriotism and Empire mean to them, save only the doubling
of their burdens and their masters' profits?