Think what such a man as Pugsley has wrought in the name of Respectability. He has systematically lied, cheated, and crushed the weaker to the wall. He has piled up wealth by defrauding the widow and the orphan of bare human rights, turning them into worse than slaves by his thrice-accursed lust for money. I have heard of old servants being deposed in his warehouse, and put into subordinate positions to make way for the young; of men dismissed for the expression of Liberal political opinions; of hands threatened with discharge for professing trades union principles; of fines wrung from hungry children for trivial offences; and of bullying and insult and injustices without number. I hear my cut-and-dried economist calling me to account with his formulas and expositions. Ah! I have listened to them; I have read them; but they never have, and never will, persuade me that Pugsley, the plutocrat, does what is right and humane and reasonable towards those who have built up his fortune, and bought his mansions and his yacht, and dowered his daughters. I know about competition, and the law of demand and supply, and I take my stand on sound social science. But no science that I have studied convinces me that this plutocracy and plunder and monopoly are good for anyone but the plutocrats and the plunderers. And not good for them, either, in any moral sense. Is it moral to kill the social affections? I say that the professional burglar is a model of virtue by the side of Pugsley. He does not pose as a Christian philanthropist and a friend of the people when he goes about his nefarious business. Pugsley, the great successful gambler, fines poor country louts for playing pitch and toss with halfpence. The next day he perpetrates a filthy fraud on 'Change. Shelley was right, the true ruffian of a community is not the cutpurse who knocks you down in the Gray's Inn Road, and gags you, while his accomplice grabs your watch and valuables, but the "Respectable man--the smooth, smiling villain whom all the City honours, whose very trade is lies and murder; who buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men." I want to know why the big thief, Pugsley, is made a peer, and the man who steals a handful of turnips is sent to the County gaol? The other day, a labourer, out of work, wired a rabbit on Pugsley's estate, and went to prison for a week for the misdemeanour. But Pugsley annexed the very land that the rabbit was on, a good wide strip of it, too, which belonged to the people. I used to walk on that same ground, looking for the first primroses. Now I must ask Pugsley's permission before I dare set a foot there, on this property which I own in common with my neighbours! And you tell me that this sort of "law and order" is good for my morals.