e the vote," said a disgusted villa lady,
with her nose in the air. "Only the low, ignorant people wear those
colours," another lady assured her little boy, whose eyes preferred
"those colours" to the favours in his own buttonhole. More pointed was
the overheard remark of a well-to-do employer, irritated by the election
crowds in the town: "As my wife says, it was bad enough before. The
children of the lower classes used, as it was, to take the inside of the
pavement, and we had to walk on the kerb. But now we shall be driven out
into the road."

I would not mention these things were it not for their significance to
the village folk. By becoming wage-earners solely, the villagers have
fallen into the disfavour of an influential section of the
middle-classes, most of whom have no other desire than to keep them in a
sufficient state of servility to be useful. How else is one to interpret
that frequent middle-class outcry against education: "What are we going
to do for servants?" or how else the grudging attitude taken up towards
the few comforts that cottage people are able to enjoy? I listened
lately to two men talking of "Tariff Reform"--one of them a commercial
traveller, lofty in his patriotism. When mention was made of some old
man's tale, that in his boyhood be rarely tasted meat, "unless a sheep
died," the commercial traveller commented scornfully, "And now every
working man in the kingdom thinks he must have meat twice a day"--as
though such things ought not to be in the British Empire. The falsehood
of the remark enhanced its significance. It was the sort of thing to say
in hotel-bars, or in the offices of commerce--the sort of thing that
goes down well with employers. It indicated that the animus of which I
am speaking is almost a commonplace. In truth, I have heard it expressed
dozens of times, in dozens of ways, yet always with the same implied
suggestion, that the English labouring classes are a lower order of
beings, who must be treated accordingly.

And yet employers of this type, representing the wealth, perhaps, but by
no means the culture, of modern civilization, are, in fact, nearer to
the unlettered labourers in their outlook, and are therefore by far less
embarrassing to them, than those of another and kindlier type which
figures largely in this parish to-day. Those people for whom the
enclosure of the common, as it has turned out, made room in the
valley--I mean the well-to-do residents--employ loca