“It’s revolution,” Culvain muttered.  “You may call that a responsibility, indeed.  Who’s going to feed the people?  Who’s going to keep them from pillaging and rioting?”

“No one,” Maraton replied quietly.  “A revolution is inevitable.  Perhaps after that we may have to face the coming of a foreign enemy.  And yet, even with this contingency in view, I want you to ask yourselves:  What have the people to lose?  Those who will suffer by anything that could possibly happen, will be the wealthy.  From those who have not, nothing can be taken.  What I prophesy is that in the next phase of our history, a new era will dawn.  Our industries will be re-established upon different lines.  The loss entailed by the revolution, by the dislocating of all our industries, will fall upon the people who are able and who deserve to pay for it.”

There was a moment’s grim silence.  Then David Ross suddenly lifted his head.

“It’s a great blow!” he cried.  “It’s the hand of the Lord falling upon the land, long overdue—­too long overdue.  The man’s right!  This people have had a century to set their house in order.  The warning has been in their ears long enough.  The thunder has muttered so long, it’s time the storm should break.  Let ruin come, I say!”

“You can talk any silly nonsense you like, David Ross,” Dale declared angrily, “but what I say is that we are listening to the most dangerous stuff any man ever spouted.  What’s to become of us, I’d like to know, with a revolution in the country?”

“You would probably lose your jobs,” Maraton answered calmly.  “What does it matter?  There are others to follow you.  The first whom the people will turn upon will be those who have pulled down the pillars.  Our names will be hated by every one of them.  What does it matter?  It is for their good.”

Peter Dale doubled up his fist and once more he smote the table before him.

“I am dead against you, Maraton,” he announced.  “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  If you go to Newcastle, I go there to fight you.  If you go to any of the places in this country represented by us, our Member will be there to fight.  We are in Parliament to do our best for the people we represent, bit by bit as we can.  We are not there to plunge the country into a revolution and run the risk of a foreign invasion.  There isn’t one of us Englishmen here who’ll agree with you or side with you for one moment.”

“Hear, hear!” they all echoed.

“Not one,” Graveling interposed, “and for my part, I go further.  I say that the man who stands there and talks about the risk of a foreign invasion like that, is no Englishman.  I call him a traitor, and if the thing comes he speaks of, may he be hung from the nearest lamp-post!  That’s all I’ve got to say.”

Maraton opened his lips and closed them again.  He looked slowly down that wall of blank, unsympathetic faces and he merely shrugged his shoulders.  Words were wasted upon them.