nour--if honour she really has!' replied the first
speaker.

'Nay! Your expressions are too severe. You are too discontented to be
just.'

'Am I! Hear me for a moment, and you will change your opinion. You
see me now by my bearing and appearance superior to yonder plebeian
herd. You doubtless think that I live at my ease in the world, that I
can feel no anxiety for the future about my bodily necessities. What
would you say were I to tell you that if I want another meal, a lodging
for to-night, a fresh robe for tomorrow, I must rob or flatter some
great man to gain them? Yet so it is. I am hopeless, friendless,
destitute. In the whole of the Empire there is not an honest calling
in which I can take refuge. I must become a pander or a parasite--a
hired tyrant over slaves, or a chartered groveller beneath nobles--if I
would not starve miserably in the streets, or rob openly in the woods!
This is what I am. Now listen to what I was. I was born free. I
inherited from my father a farm which he had successfully defended from
the encroachments of the rich, at the expense of his comfort, his
health, and his life. When I succeeded to his lands, I determined to
protect them in my time as studiously as he had defended them in his.
I worked unintermittingly: I enlarged my house, I improved my fields,
I increased my flocks. One after another I despised the threats and
defeated the wiles of my noble neighbours, who desired possession of my
estate to swell their own territorial grandeur. In process of time I
married and had a child. I believed that I was picked out from my race
as a fortunate man--when one night I was attacked by robbers: slaves
made desperate by the cruelty of their wealthy masters. They ravaged
my cornfields, they deprived me of my flocks. When I demanded redress,
I was told to sell my lands to those who could defend them--to those
rich nobles whose tyranny had organised the band of wretches who had
spoiled me of my possessions, and to whose fraud-gotten treasures the
government were well pleased to grant that protection which they had
denied to my honest hoards. In my pride I determined that I would
still be independent. I planted new crops. With the little remnant of
my money I hired fresh servants and bought more flocks. I had just
recovered from my first disaster when I became the victim of a second.
I was again attacked. This time we had arms, and we attempted to
defend ourselves. My wi