"You are ignorant of history, Mr. Cecil Stark. We have centuries of experience on which to base our judgment. What think you fostered the naval rebellion of fifteen years agone? As a sailor that will interest you. Why, the pen-and-ink gentry aboard His Majesty's ships of war! They made a mutiny with their devilish doctrines scratched on paper and spread in secret from vessel to vessel. How shall we suppress concerted action in the multitude, if every Jack among 'em learns to read and write? Consider the sedition that must spring from such an abandoned state. No, let the poor work, not think. These people are only too ready to believe that their penury is the result of our oppression, and grows incompatible with the rights of man. Then what follows?" "They'll do as we did and cast off their chains for ever," declared the sailor. "You would support anarchy then?" "And yet you yourself, sir, give your own workers more than the usual wage, and pay the women as women were never paid elsewhere--so Kekewich informed me." Malherb shook his head impatiently. "They will be talking, damn them, instead of doing their work. Don't argue from a particular case. I've my own private opinion--especially as to women's labour on the land. That's neither here nor there. I'm possibly wrong. Education takes the poor to the devil. Enlarge their views and you distort their views. They institute uncomfortable and improper comparisons; they begin to confuse the rights of property; the sanctity of birth is forgotten; the interests of the country are threatened: the State totters and falls." "Surely the sooner it falls, the better for England. A State built on foundations of ignorance----" "So you echo your specious people. Ignorance is the solid and everlasting rock on which the prosperity of every State must exist. If you believe your Bible, you will see from Genesis that the Creator made happiness depend on ignorance. The Tree of Knowledge is a very statesmanlike conceit. Preserve a fundamental ignorance at any cost. Your own life depends upon it. Once let knowledge in--'tis like the foul air in a mine--death follows. The Church battens on that golden rule; so does the State. The security of both lie therein. But our spiritual and temporal lords are far too wise openly to proclaim what I tell you." "Then God help your country," answered the younger man; "for a policy more cynical, more vile, was never uttered. I go to prison now, but 'tis you who are in prison. I am free. This State's a prison--a prison not made with hands, but with heads--a prison of cruel prejudices, narrow distinctions, distrusts, hatreds, and lies. But your prosperous errors shall not always prevail against unpopular truths. Your time will come." "I wish you had been better brought up," said Malherb. "You feel deeply; there is character in you; but unfortunately it has been poisoned at the source."