Mr. Babbs’s speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man. More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers, artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in berating their opponents, he said: “There’s a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o’-war and sailing-ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any officers ever tell me--the fo’castle for the men and the quarter-deck for the officers, and what’s English to one is Greek to the other. Well, this was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking, sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, ‘Allow me to speak, me noble lord,’ and follow this by hitting some one of the party wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.] Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble lordship. Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it was all about. That is much the way with politics, when it is played fair. But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born the same, nor can we live the same. One man is born a brute, and another a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the other hasn’t. Now, I’ve lived where, as they say, one man is as good as another. But he isn’t, there or here. A weak man can’t run with a strong. We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against something. It is over. Are you sure you have got what was meant clear in your mind? [Laughter, and ‘Blowed if we’ave!’] Very well; do not worry about that. We have been playing a game of ‘Allow me to speak, me noble lord!’ And who is going to help you to get the most out of your country and your life isn’t easy to know. But we can get hold of a few clear ideas, and measure things against them. I know and have talked with a good many of you here [‘That’s so! That’s so!’], and you know my ideas pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen the countries where freedom is ‘on the job,’ as they say. Now, don’t put your faith in men and in a party that cry, ‘We will make all things new,’ to the tune of, ‘We are a band of brothers.’ Trust in one that says, ‘You cannot undo the centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.’ And that is the real difference between the other party and mine; and these political games of ours come to that chiefly.” Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for Mr. Babbs. Suddenly a man’s strong, arid voice came from the crowd: