’Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are all—­men women, and children—­fit for a republic:  but give me a constitutional monarchy in our present state of morals and intelligence.  In our infancy we require a wise despotism to govern us.  Indeed, long past infancy, children and young people are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a discreet, firm authority.  I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider our people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so.  I maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be an autocrat.  I will use my best discretion—­from no humbug or philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the North—­to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my business—­laws and decisions which work for my own good in the first instance—­for theirs in the second; but I will neither be forced to give my reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my resolution.  Let them turn out!  I shall suffer as well as they:  but at the end they will find I have not bated nor altered one jot.’

Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her work; but she did not speak.  Mr. Hale answered—­

’I dare say I am talking in great ignorance; but from the little I know, I should say that the masses were already passing rapidly into the troublesome stage which intervenes between childhood and manhood, in the life of the multitude as well as that of the individual.  Now, the error which many parents commit in the treatment of the individual at this time is, insisting on the same unreasoning obedience as when all he had to do in the way of duty was, to obey the simple laws of “Come when you’re called” and “Do as you’re bid!” But a wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.  If I get wrong in my reasoning, recollect, it is you who adopted the analogy.’

‘Very lately,’ said Margaret, ’I heard a story of what happened in Nuremberg only three or four years ago.  A rich man there lived alone in one of the immense mansions which were formerly both dwellings and warehouses.  It was reported that he had a child, but no one knew of it for certain.  For forty years this rumour kept rising and falling—­never utterly dying away.  After his death it was found to be true.  He had a son—­an overgrown man with the unexercised intellect of a child, whom he had kept up in that strange way, in order to save him from temptation and error.  But, of course, when this great old child was turned loose into the world, every bad counsellor had power over him.  He did not know good from evil.  His father had made the blunder of bringing him up in ignorance and taking it for innocence; and after fourteen months of riotous living, the city authorities had to take charge of him, in order to save him from starvation.  He could not even use words effectively enough to be a successful beggar.’