I’ve lived in this blessed place for fifty years, and I’ve never seen the spark of an idea, nor of any response to an idea, come out of a single one of you, all the time.  I don’t know what it is with colliers—­whether it’s spending so much time in the bowels of the earth—­but they never seem to be able to get their thoughts above their bellies.  If you’ve got plenty to eat and drink, and a bit over to keep the missis quiet, you’re satisfied.  I never saw such a satisfied bloomin’ lot in my life as you Barlow & Wasall’s men are, really.  Of course you can growse as well as anybody, and you do growse.  But you don’t do anything else.  You’re stuck in a sort of mud of contentment, and you feel yourselves sinking, but you make no efforts to get out.  You bleat a bit, like sheep in a bog—­but you like it, you know.  You like sinking in—­you don’t have to stand on your own feet then.

I’ll tell you what’ll happen to you chaps.  I’ll give you a little picture of what you’ll be like in the future.  Barlow & Walsall’s ’ll make a number of compounds, such as they keep niggers in in South Africa, and there you’ll be kept.  And every one of you’ll have a little brass collar round his neck, with a number on it.  You won’t have names any more.  And you’ll go from the compound to the pit, and from the pit back again to the compound.  You won’t be allowed to go outside the gates, except at week-ends.  They’ll let you go home to your wives on Saturday nights, to stop over Sunday.  But you’ll have to be in again by half-past nine on Sunday night; and if you’re late, you’ll have your next week-end knocked off.  And there you’ll be—­ and you’ll be quite happy.  They’ll give you plenty to eat, and a can of beer a day, and a bit of bacca—­and they’ll provide dominoes and skittles for you to play with.  And you’ll be the most contented set of men alive.—­But you won’t be men.  You won’t even be animals.  You’ll go from number one to number three thousand, a lot of numbered slaves—­a new sort of slaves—–­

Voice.  An’ wheer shall thee be, Willie?

Willie.  Oh, I shall be outside the palings, laughing at you.  I shall have to laugh, because it’ll be your own faults.  You’ll have nobody but yourself to thank for it.  You don’t want to be men.  You’d rather not be free—­much rather.  You’re like those people spoken of in Shakespeare:  “Oh, how eager these men are to be slaves!” I believe it’s Shakespeare—­or the Bible—­one or the other—­it mostly is—–­

Anabel wrath (she was passing to church).  It was Tiberius.

Willie.  Eh?

Anabel.  Tiberius said it.