. These
coal-owners, though they have not earned the mines, though they could
not work the mines, do quite honestly feel that they own the mines.
Hence your suggestion of shooting them down, or even of confiscating
their property, raises very—"

"What do you mean?" asked the man with the cigar, with a bullying eye.
"Who yer talking about?"

"I'm talking about what you were talking about," I replied; "as you put
it so perfectly, about the handful of obstinate fellows who are standing
between the country and the coal. I mean the men who are selling their
own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those
prices, care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes
and pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples
that were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a
bit of a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme
violence you suggest. You say—"

"I say," he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid
energy like that of some noble beast, "I say I'd take all these blasted
miners and—"

I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood
staring at that mental monster.

"Oh," I said, "so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal
servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be
shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead
they will start mining again...You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem
somewhat moved. The fact is, I have just found something. Something I
have been looking for for years."

"Well," he asked, with no unfriendly stare, "and what have you found?"

"No," I answered, shaking my head sadly, "I do not think it would be
quite kind to tell you what I have found."

He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour,
and we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the
disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country
sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county
magistrate, a Member of Parliament, and a director of several important
companies. He was also that other thing, which I did not tell him.

The moral is that a certain sort of person does exist, to whose glory
this article is dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the
miner, who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He
is not the mine-owner, who is