‘But why do you care so little for what is going on now?’ ‘I do care, but all people are not born to be agitators, and, furthermore, I have doubts if the Charter will accomplish all you expect.’ ‘I know what is coming’—Marshall took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke with perceptible sarcasm—‘the inefficiency of merely external remedies, the folly of any attempt at improvement which does not begin with the improvement of individual character, and that those to whom we intend to give power are no better than those from whom we intend to take it away. All very well, Mr Cohen. My answer is that at the present moment the stockingers in Leicester are earning four shillings and sixpence a week. It is not a question whether they are better or worse than their rulers. They want something to eat, they have nothing, and their masters have more than they can eat.’ ‘Apart altogether from purely material reasons,’ said Dennis, ‘we have rights; we are born into this planet without our consent, and, therefore, we may make certain demands.’ ‘Do you not think,’ said Clara, ‘that the repeal of the corn laws will help you?’ Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out savagely,— ‘Repeal of the corn laws is a contemptible device of manufacturing selfishness. It means low wages. Do you suppose the great Manchester cotton lords care one straw for their hands? Not they! They will face a revolution for repeal because it will enable them to grind an extra profit out of us.’ ‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Dennis, turning to Clara, ‘that a tax upon food is wrong; it is wrong in the abstract. The notion of taxing bread, the fruit of the earth, is most repulsive; but the point is—what is our policy to be? If a certain end is to be achieved, we must neglect subordinate ends, and, at times, even contradict what our own principles would appear to dictate. That is the secret of successful leadership.’ He took up the poker and stirred the fire. ‘That will do, Dennis,’ said Marshall, who was evidently fidgety. ‘The room is rather warm. There’s nothing in Vincent which irritates me more than those bits of poetry with which he winds up. “God made the man—man made the slave,” and all that stuff. If God made the man, God made the slave. I know what Vincent’s little game is, and it is the same game with all his set. They want to keep Chartism religious, but we shall see. Let us once get the six points, and the Established Church will go, and we shall have secular education, and in a generation there will not be one superstition left.’ ‘Theological superstition, you mean?’ said Clara. ‘Yes, of course, what others are there worth notice?’ ‘A few. The superstition of the ordinary newspaper reader is just as profound, and the tyranny of the majority may be just as injurious as the superstition of a Spanish peasant, or the tyranny of the Inquisition.’