Just as the faithful were assembled in their conventicles adoring the same Deity, all filled with rancour against one another because their methods of interpretation of the Creator’s will were different, so did the politicians and the cranks of every sort and sect turn out to push their methods of salvation for mankind. In groups they gathered round the various speakers who discoursed from chairs and carts and points of vantage on the streets. Above the speakers’ heads, banners, held up between two poles, called on the audiences to vote for Liberal or for Tory, for Poor Law Reform, for Social Purity, and for Temperance. Orators, varying from well-dressed and glibly-educated hacks from party centres, to red-faced working-men, held forth perspiring, and occasionally bedewing those who listened to them with saliva, after an emphatic burst. It seemed so easy after listening to them to redress all wrongs, smooth out all wrinkles, and instate each citizen in his own shop where he could sell his sweated goods, with the best advantage to himself and with the greatest modicum of disadvantage to his neighbour, that one was left amazed at the dense apathy of those who did not fall in with the nostrums they had heard. Again, at other platforms, sleek men in broadcloth, who had never seen a plough except at Agricultural Exhibitions, nor had got on closer terms of friendship with a horse than to be bitten by him as they passed along a street, discoursed upon the land. “My friends, I say, the land is a fixed quantity, you can’t increase it, and without it, it’s impossible to live. ’Ow is it, then, that all the land of England is in so few hands?” He paused and mopped his face, and looking round, began again: “Friends—you’ll allow me to style you Friends, I know, Friends in the sycred cause of Liberty—the landed aristocracy is our enemy. “I am not out for confiscation, why should I? I ’ave my ’ome purchased with the fruits of my own hhonest toil . . .” Before he could conclude his sentence, a dock labourer, dressed in his Sunday suit of shoddy serge, check shirt, and black silk handkerchief knotted loosely round his neck, looked up, and interjected: “’Ard work, too, mate, that ’ere talkin’ in the sun is, that built your ’ome. Beats coal whippin’.” Just for an instant the orator was disconcerted as a laugh ran through the audience; but habit, joined to a natural gift of public speaking, came to his aid, and he rejoined: “Brother working-men, I say ditto to what has fallen from our friend ’ere upon my right. We all are working-men. Some of us, like our friend, work with their ’ands, and others with their ’eds. In either case, the Land is what we ’ave to get at as an article of prime necessity.”