"And yet, the clerks, and the struggling tradesmen, and professional men, have to pay poor-rates and house-rates, and all sorts of petty taxes, from which the fetish `working-man' is free; besides the income- tax, which never approaches him. The latter, often getting from three to five pounds in wages, can dress as he pleases, live in a single room for five shillings a week, pay no rates or taxes; and may, finally, disport himself as he likes--leaving off work whenever the fancy strikes him and resuming it again at his pleasure--without consulting the convenience or the wishes of his employer, who is, through trades' unions and special class legislation, entirely at his mercy! "Clerks, shopkeepers, and struggling professional men, cannot do this, however. _They_ have to conform to certain rules of society; and keep up an appearance of respectability on, frequently, half the sum that the mechanic gets in wages, as I've said already--while groaning under a burden of taxation from which the great `liberal' fetish is completely free. _He_ is a `working-man,' my dear:--_they_, are nothing of the sort.--Oh, no!" "Do they really obtain such good wages?" I inquired;--"if so, what on earth do they do with the money?" "Yes,"--said the vicar, in full swing of his favourite political argument,--"if anything, I have rather understated the case than exaggerated it. The manager of one of the telegraph-cable manufactories down the river, told me the other day, that, many of the hands drew four and five pounds regularly each Saturday. And these men, he further informed me, spent the greater part of this in drink and pleasuring on their off-days. They will have good food and the best, too--such as I cannot afford, in these days of high butchers' bills; notwithstanding that they make such a poor show for their money, and save none of it, either! I do not complain of this, politically speaking, for, `an Englishman's house is his castle,' you know, and he has the right to live as he pleases; but, I do say, that when poor curates and clerks are so taxed, these men ought to bear their share of the taxation, possessing, as they do, incomes quite as large and in many cases greater." "But, they are taxed indirectly, though, are they not?"--I asked. "Certainly; but, so also are all of us, the larger number of _real_ working-men of the country--quite in addition to the heavy burden we have to bear of local and direct taxation! The pseudo `working-man' should fairly contribute his quota to all this--particularly, since his bottle-holders have been so clamourous for giving him a share in the government of the state. If he wants `a share in the government,' why, he should help to support it:--that's what I say!" And the vicar then went off into a tirade against class legislators and radical politics, not forgetting to animadvert, too, on the "Manchester School"--his great bete noir.