en
people used to think they were made and ordained by divine authority.
"Cum privilegio" was the motto of the captains. But we know very well
now that every club settles its own standing orders, and that it can
alter and modify them as fundamentally as it pleases. Lots of funny old
saws are still uttered upon this subject--"There must always be rich and
poor;" "You can't interfere with economical laws;" "If you were to
divide up everything to-morrow, at the end of a fortnight you'd find the
same differences and inequalities as ever." The last-named argument (I
believe it considers itself by courtesy an argument) is one which no
self-respecting Radical should so much as deign to answer. Nobody that I
ever heard of for one moment proposed to "divide up everything," or, for
that matter, anything: and the imputation that somebody did or does is a
proof either of intentional malevolence or of crass stupidity. Neither
should be encouraged; and you encourage them by pretending to take them
seriously. It is the initial injustices of the game that we Radicals
object to--the injustices which prevent us from all starting fair and
having our even chance of picking up a livelihood. We don't want to
"divide up everything"--a most futile proceeding; but we do want to
untie the legs and release the arms of the handicapped players. To drop
metaphor at last, it is the conditions we complain about. Alter the
conditions, and there would be no need for division, summary or gradual.
The game would work itself out spontaneously without your intervention.

The injustice of the existing set of rules simply appals the Radical.
Yet oddly enough, this injustice itself appeals rather to the
comparative looker-on than to the heavily-handicapped players in person.
They, poor creatures, dragging their log in patience, have grown so
accustomed to regarding the world as another man's oyster, that they put
up uncomplainingly for the most part with the most patent inequalities.
Perhaps 'tis their want of imagination that makes them unable to
conceive any other state of things as even possible--like the dog who
accepts kicking as the natural fate of doghood. At any rate, you will
find, if you look about you, that the chief reformers are not, as a
rule, the ill-used classes themselves, but the sensitive and thinking
souls who hate and loathe the injustice with which others are treated.
Most of the best Radicals I have known were men of gentle birth and
bre