Non-Socialists often reproach Socialists for sentimentality. But surely it is sentimentality to talk as the non-Socialist does about the personal excellences of the aristocracy. What have Lady Dedlock's amiability and beauty to do with the practical questions of gas rates and wages? I am "setting class against class." Quite right, too, so long as one class oppresses another. But let us reverse the position. Suppose you go to the Duke of Hebden Bridge and ask for an engagement as clerk in his Grace's colliery at a salary of L5000 a year. Will the duke give it to you because your wife is pretty and your daughter thinks you are a great man? Not at all. His Grace would say, "My dear sir, you are doubtless an excellent citizen, husband, and father; but I can get a better clerk at a pound a week, sir; and I cannot afford to pay more, sir." The duke would be quite correct. He could get a better clerk for L1 a week. And as for the amiability of your family, or your own personal merits, what have they to do with business? As a business man the duke will not pay L2 a week to a clerk if he can get a man as good for L1 a week. Then why should the clerk pay 4s. a thousand for his gas if he can get it for 2s. 2d.? Or why should the docker pay the duke 5s. rent if he can get a house for 2s. 6d.? Should I be offended with the duke for refusing to pay me more than I am worth? Should I accuse him of class hatred? Not at all. Then why should I be blamed for suggesting that it is folly to pay a duke more than he is worth? Or why should the duke mutter about class hatred if I suggest that we can get a colliery director at a lower salary than his Grace? Talk about sentimentality! Are we to pay a guinea each for dukes if we can get them three a penny? It is not business. I grudge no man his wealth nor his fortune. I want nothing that is his. I do not hate the rich: I pity the poor. It is of the women and children of the poor I think when I am agitating for _Socialism_, not of the coffers of the wealthy. I believe in universal brotherhood; nay, I go even further, for I maintain that the sole difference between the worst man and the best is a difference of opportunity--that is to say, that since heredity and environment make one man amiable and another churlish, one generous and another mean, one faithful and another treacherous, one wise and another foolish, one strong and another weak, one vile and another pure, therefore the bishop and the hooligan, the poet and the boor, the idiot, the philosopher, the thief, the hero, and the brutalised drab in the kennel _are all equal in the sight of God and of justice_, and that every word of censure uttered by man is a word of error, growing out of ignorance. As the sun shines alike upon the evil and the good, so must we give love and mercy to all our fellow-creatures. "Judgment is mine, saith the Lord."