“This is the answer. It is too much, perhaps, to ask you, from the marsh of suffering, with your low personal point of view, to appreciate the heights of impersonality reached in this vicarious sacrifice. But you may possibly respect its depths of common sense. Can you blame the practical wisdom of this Public Opinion, in which you have no part? If you had a part in it, would you not yourself endorse it? If _you_ were a man of means, that is of means sufficient to enjoy the privileges of the Law, would you seriously offer to exert yourself to upset your conception of your country’s moral worth, and lose secretly a little of your self-esteem, that you might extend those privileges to such of your fellow-citizens as could not pay for them? Would you not rather feel: My own position is secure; this idea is only sentiment, mere _abstract_ justice! If they want it they must pay for it! “By no means think that this great principle of payment is confined merely to divorce; it underlies all justice in a greater or a less degree. It is ‘money makes the mare to go!’ It is money that dictates the measure of justice and its methods. But this is so mingled with the essence of our lives that we do not even notice it. Why, you could hardly find a man who, if you went to him in private and put your case, would not say at once that you were hardly used! To the Law you cannot go privately; and the Law is the guardian of all justice. “I have told you the requirements of the Law. You have not fulfilled them. And, having made this error, you must, evidently, now go forth, either to enjoy your own society for the remainder of your days, or, as Nature drives you, to consort with those who at each touch will remind you of what your wife has now become; and in this journey of enjoyment, whichever of the two journeys it may be, you will be sustained, no doubt, by the consciousness that you are serving the morality of your country, and strengthening the esteem in which the marriage tie is held. You will be inspired by the knowledge that you are sharing this voyage of pleasure and of privilege with thousands of other men and women, as decent and as kind as you. And you will feel, year by year, prouder and prouder of your country that has reached these heights of justice....” HOPE XIX HOPE Wet or fine, hot or cold, nothing was more certain than that the lame man would pass, leaning on his twisted oaken stick, his wicker basket slung on his shoulder. In that basket, covered by a bit of sacking, was groundsel, and rarely, in the season, a few mushrooms kept carefully apart in a piece of newspaper.