though never for one moment sundered one from the other in heart or
affection by differences of opinion, the two could not work together in
this field. Downright, practical George has his objections, and states
them. Listen: "'You don't want to divide other people's property?' 'No.'
'Then why call yourselves Socialists?' 'But we couldn't help ourselves:
other people called us so first.' 'Yes, but you needn't have accepted
the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?' 'Well, it would have
been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of
association as opposed to competition, as the true law of industry and
of organizing labor--of securing the laborer's position by organizing
production and consumption--and it would be cowardly to shirk the name.
It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested
in the competitive system of trade, who believe or say that a desire to
divide other people's property is of the essence of Socialism.' 'That
may be very true, but nine-tenths of mankind, or, at any rate, of
Englishmen, come under one or the other of these categories. If you are
called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this
is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight
enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.... The
long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your
main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with
society as it is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is
full of injustice and abuses of all kinds, and will never be better till
men are thoroughly discontented. I don't see these evils so strongly as
you do, don't believe in heroic remedies, and would sooner see people
contented, and making the best of society as they find it. In fact, I
was bred and born a Tory, and I can't help it.'" However, our biographer
tells us, "he (George) continued to pay his subscription, and to get his
clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was more than
some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest
principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of
kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing."

After a few years of law-work in the ecclesiastical courts, the call of
a domestic duty took George Hughes--not, one may well imagine, without a
severe struggle--from the active practice of his pro