truth. People of his
rank--cottage people, labouring people--do, indeed, not dare to wander
in country places anywhere off the public roads.

Much more might be said on the same lines. Whether inevitably or no, at
all events it happens that the march of respectability gives, to
regulations which may be quite proper in themselves, a very strong
appearance of being directed against the poorer working people. No doubt
it is right enough that the brawling of the "drunk and disorderly" on
the highroads should be checked; the public interest demands it; yet the
impression conveyed is that the regulations are enforced more for the
pleasure of property-owners than anybody else; that, in fact,
middle-class respectability has, so to speak, made this law especially
with a view to keeping the working classes in order. I am not urging
that in this there is any substantial grievance; the offence is rarely
committed by others than labourers, and by them too often. Yet it is
well known that, while a labourer roystering along the road is pounced
upon and locked up, an employer the worse for drink is shepherded home
from his hotel by the police, and the affair hushed up. From
circumstances like these--and they are very common--a suspicion is bred
in cottage people that they are not in good odour with the authorities.
The law rather tolerates than befriends them. They are not wanted, are
not regarded as equal fellow-citizens with the well-to-do, but are
expected to be quiet, or to keep out of sight. English people though
they are, yet, if nobody will employ them so that they can pay rent for
a cottage, they have no admitted rights in England--unless it be to go
to the workhouse or to keep moving on upon the public road. In endless
ways the sense of inequality is impressed upon them. I opened the local
paper lately, and read of four of our young labourers accused of
"card-playing." The game was "Banker," the policeman told the
magistrates--as if gentlemen were likely to know what that meant!--and
he had caught the fellows red-handed, in some as yet unfenced nook of
the heath. That was how they were in fault. They should not have been
playing where they could be seen, in the open air; they should have
taken their objectionable game out of sight, into some private house, as
the middle-classes do--and as, I suppose, the policeman himself must
have done in his time, since he knew the game. Unfortunately for the
labouring men, they have no priv