“An impossible equation,” said Mr. Clare, smiling. “What is the obstacle?” “This. Given your equitable division and your Jewish land-laws—why, the people would be too well contented to take any more steps until that state of society had become as rotten as the present.” “Revolutions never go backward,” returned the other, “and, rotten as our present state of society may be, we are farther on than any nation of the world, and our real progress so far has been steadily in the right direction.” “Humph! as you never argue, I suppose you can’t prove that.” “Oh, no! but I can give you a few instances,” said the clergyman, laughing. “Take the idea of duty or allegiance to a man—or woman—who claims it simply as his birthright, because his ancestors oppressed ours, whom they allowed only such rights as were actually extorted from them. Unless your mother was an Englishwoman, as mine was, Dr. Richards, you can hardly realize how utterly obsolete such an idea has become in America. I don’t deny that we feel a sneaking kindness for the royal family of Great Britain; but anything like duty or loyalty”— “Why should we be loyal to Queen Victoria or Kaiser Wilhelm, either?” asked Louis, speaking for the first time. “She’s a good woman, and he’s a great soldier; but that has nothing to do with _us_.” “That is exactly what I mean,” said Ernest Clare. “The idea of superiority of birth is rapidly decaying, Dr. Richards; we have almost come to believe that all men are created free and equal; after a bit, we shall come to the ‘inalienable rights.’ I am not at all afraid but that the Declaration will take care of itself. As for your impossible equation, you must bear in mind the conditions of the problem. If ‘gradual enfranchisement’ equal _x_, and brotherly love on both sides equal _y_, then, indeed, 1 + _y_ = _x_ + 100^m might be possible and welcome! I won’t stickle for the form of a commune, so long as I have the spirit.” “Ah—h!” cried Father McClosky, “ye’ve got to firm ground at last, ye bog-trotter! the very ground where the Church has been intrenched for eighteen hundred years!” “And high time,” said Ernest Clare with quiet intensity, “that she should take up the ark of the Lord, and bear it across Jordan into the Promised Land.” “I don’t quite understand you,” said the doctor curiously. He was intensely interested in the theories and beliefs of his new friend, which, as the reader may have observed, he only opposed to draw out more fully. “Why, you know, of course, that communism is the theory of the Church,” said Mr. Clare. “Marion Crawford brings that out very well in his ‘Saracinesca;’ but Crawford—I hope I don’t do him injustice—seems to me a dilettante in religion and politics, who doesn’t believe anything deeply enough to fight for it.” “Aha!” cried Father McClosky, “there’s the blood of ould Ireland at last!” “Fighting with one’s pen is quite in accordance with the spirit of the age,” replied Mr. Clare calmly. “But not argument, hey?”