l, you'd think by the look of it, it was made on the seventh day ...
when God rested. Landlords didn't do that, Henry, or anything as bad as
that. It was mill-owners that did it. Oh, I know well enough that
landlords were not all they ought to have been, but I'm certain of this,
that labourers on the land were healthier under landlords than they are
under mill-owners, and even if we weren't as good to the labourers as we
might have been, at least we had respect for God's world, an' I never
met a mill-owner yet that had respect for anything but a bankbook. I've
been in Lancashire an' I've listened to these mill-owners ... I've
listened to them talkin', an' I've listened to them eatin' an' drinkin'
... an' they talked 'brass' an' they thought 'brass,' an' I'm damned if
they didn't drink 'brass.' That's characteristic of them. They call
money 'brass.' Brass! Do you think they care for the fine look of things
or an old house or a picture or books or anything that's decent? No,
Henry ... all they care for is 'brass,' an' that's what's the matter
with the English ... they think too much about money ... easy money ...
an' they think so much about gettin' it that none of them have any time
to think of how they'll spend it when they do get it. An' they just fool
it away! Eat it away, drink it away! An' then they have to go to Buxton
an' Matlock an' Harrogate to sweat the muck out of their blood!"

Henry reminded his father of the bloods and bucks and macaronis of the
eighteenth century ... the last of the English gentlemen.

"After all, father, they weren't so very much better than the lot you're
denouncing!"

"Yes, they were. They had the tradition of gentlemen behind them. They
were drunkards and gamblers and women-hunters an' Lord knows what not,
but behind it all, Henry, they had the tradition of gentlemen, an' that
saved them from things that a mill-owner does as a matter of course. An'
anyway, their theory was right. They thought more of spendin' money than
of makin' it, an' that was right. It isn't makin' money that matters ...
any fool can do that ... it's spendin' money that matters. You're less
likely to make a mess of the world when you're spendin', than when
you're makin', money, an' the English'll find that out yet. God'll not
forget in a hurry the way they tore up their good land an' made dirty,
stinkin' towns out of it, an' by the Holy O, He'll make them suffer for
it. If I was an Englishman, I wouldn't want any