There was a minute’s silence, and then Mr. Forbes spoke:  “I should like our legal appointments to include advocates of the poor, men of integrity whose business it would be to watch over the rights and listen to the grievances of those classes who live by laborious work and are helpless to resist powerful wrong.  Old truth bears repeating:  these are the classes who maintain the state of the world—­the laborer that holds the plough and whose talk is of bullocks, the carpenter, the smith, and the potter.  All these trust to their hands, and are wise in their work, and when oppression comes they must seek to some one of leisure for justice.  It is a pitiful thing to hear a poor man plead, ’Sir, what can I do?’ when his heart burns with a sense of intolerable wrong, and to feel that the best advice you can give him is that he should bear it patiently.”

“I call that too sentimental on your part, Forbes,” remonstrated Mr. Chiverton.  “The laborers are quiet yet, and guidable as their own oxen, but look at the trades—­striking everywhere.  Surely your smiths and carpenters are proving themselves strong enough to protect their own interests.”

“Yes, by the combination that we should all deprecate amongst our laborers—­only by that.  Therefore the wise will be warned in time, for such example is contagious.  Many of our people have lain so long in discontent that bitter distrust has come of it, and they are ready to abandon their natural leaders for any leader who promises them more wages and less toil.  If the laborers strike, Smith’s and Fairfax’s will probably stick to their furrows, and Gifford’s will turn upon him—­yours too, Chiverton, perhaps.”  Mr. Forbes was very bold.

“God forbid that we should come to that!” exclaimed Mr. Fairfax devoutly.  “We have all something to mend in our ways.  Our view of the responsibility that goes with the possession of land has been too narrow.  If we could put ourselves in the laborer’s place!”

“I shall mend nothing:  no John Hodge shall dictate to me,” cried Mr. Chiverton in a sneering fury.  “A man has a right to do what he likes with his own, I presume?”

“No, he has not; and especially not when he calls a great territory in land his own,” said Mr. Forbes.  “That is the false principle out of which the bad practice of some of you arises.  A few have never been guided by it—­they have acted on the ancient law that the land is the Lord’s, and the profit of the land for all—­and many more begin to acknowledge that it is a false principle by which it is not safe to be guided any longer.  Pushed as far as it will go, the result is Gifford.”

“And myself,” added Mr. Chiverton in a quieter voice as he rose from his chair.  Mr. Forbes looked at him.  The old man made no sign of being affronted, and they went together into the drawing-room, where he introduced the clergyman to his wife, saying, “Here, Ada, is a gentleman who will back you in teaching me my duty to my neighbor;” and then he went over to Lady Angleby.