"I do not know of anything quite so idiotic as is this howl directed against the possession of wealth. I myself am a poor man: if I do not earn a living each year, I go hungry or go in debt. But I would not trade off my chances of a competency and of wealth--a reasonable ambition for every man in England and America--no, not to see every rich man on earth starve--or even sent to hell. This howl is the mark of a plebeian, or at least of a wickedly childish cast of intellect. I know of nothing quite so foolish, and of nothing half so brutal. The Jew-baiting folly is a phase of the same nonsense. It is foolish, because if the possession of capital is denied to the men who can best acquire and hence best continue to employ it, then commercial civilization must take a back seat--in fact, go, and go to stay; and this means abject poverty for everybody but a handful of state and church aristocrats. It is brutal, because it is unreasoning and mistakenly vindictive. It is the howl of the mentally weak--of the mob; and the mob is always brutal. "If we are to suppress those whose possessions evidence a past or a present performance of some service that the world demanded and paid for, we cast aside the useful of the earth: we know that their possessions were gained, not from the pauper, but from those who held material wealth; and I know, and can most solemnly swear, from personal experience, that in this world nobody gets anything for nothing. "Oh, the first French revolution! The French revolution was all right. The fight was not against commercial wealth, but against a corrupt church, state, and social order. And nobody maintains that the commercial class is immaculate: every class should come under the regulation of good statutory law. I only claim that it would be wrong and foolish to take away in whole or in part the accumulations of the commercial class. With us the only wealthy citizens are commercial people, and those who have acquired wealth through them, for with us here, at this time, the wealthy owners of realty are commercial men who have put their surplus money into land. Oh, yes: control them; but it's not the business men of the world who need the most looking after." And with that he shot out of the room and down the stairs; and I soon after retired to rest. The FOURTEENTH Chapter The next evening at an early hour Arthur was seated in the least conspicuous corner of my room, a spot which he seemed to have selected as his own; and, as usual, Doctor Bainbridge entered promptly at eight o'clock. After the customary minute or two of thoughtful quiet, and a glance at the map of Hili-li, which each evening I kept spread on my table in the centre of the room, Bainbridge continued his recital: