at they wanted it explained; at
Hatfield they were saying, some of them, with folded arms, that it was
self evident; other members of that great house, swinging their arms,
called it blackness of darkness and ruin, so had a prophet divided it
against itself. Wallingham, still in the Cabinet, was going up and down
the country trying not to explain too much. There was division in
the Cabinet, sore travail among private members. The conception being
ministerial, the Opposition applied itself to the task of abortion,
fearing the worst if it should be presented to the country fully
formed and featured, the smiling offspring of progress and imagination.
Travellers to Greater Britain returned waving joyous torches in the
insular fog; they shed a brilliance and infectious enthusiasm, but there
were not enough to do more than make the fog visible. Many persons found
such torches irritating. They pointed out that as England had groped
to her present greatness she might be trusted to feel her way further.
"Free trade," they said, "has made us what we are. Put out these
lights!"

Mr Chafe was one of these. He was a cautious, heavy fellow, full of
Burgundy and distrust. The basis of the imperial idea inspired him with
suspicion and hostility. He could accept the American tariff on English
manufactures; that was a plain position, simple damage, a blow full
in the face, not to be dodged. But the offer of better business in the
English colonies in exchange for a duty on the corn and meat of foreign
countries--he could see too deep for that. The colonials might or might
not be good customers; he knew how many decanters he sold in the United
States, in spite of the tariff. He saw that the tax on food-stuffs was
being commended to the working-man with the argument of higher wages.
Higher wages, with the competition of foreign labour, spelt only one
word to English manufacturers, and that was ruin. The bugbear of higher
wages, immediate, threatening, near, the terror of the last thirty
years, closed the prospect for Charles Chafe; he could see nothing
beyond. He did not say so, but to him the prosperity of the British
manufacturer was bound up in the indigence of the operative. Thriving
workmen, doing well, and looking to do better, rose before him in terms
of menace, though their prosperity might be rooted in his own. "Give
them cheap food and keep them poor," was the sum of his advice. His
opinions had the emphasis of the unexpected, the