The debate is opened.  Behold a second inevitable man; he is not well-washed, his shirt-front shows a beer-stain; he is angry before he begins.

’I don’t know whether a man as doesn’t ‘old with these kind o’ theories ’ll be allowed a fair ‘earin—­’

Indignant interruption.  Cries of ’Of course he will!’—­’Who ever refused to hear you?’—­and the like.

He is that singular phenomenon, that self-contradiction, that expression insoluble into factors of common-sense—­the Conservative working man.  What do they want to be at? he demands.  Do they suppose as this kind of talk ’ll make wages higher, or enable the poor man to get his beef and beer at a lower rate?  What’s the d—­d good of it all?  Figures, oh?  He never heered yet as figures made a meal for a man as hadn’t got one; nor yet as they provided shoes and stockings for his young ’uns at ’ome.  It made him mad to listen, that it did!  Do they suppose as the rich man ’ll give up the land, if they talk till all’s blue?  Wasn’t it human natur to get all you can and stick to it?

‘Pig’s nature!’ cries someone from the front benches.

‘There!’ comes the rejoinder.  ’Didn’t I say as there was no fair ‘earing for a man as didn’t say just what suits you?’

The voice of Daniel Dabbs is loud in good-tempered mockery.  Mockery comes from every side, an angry note here and there, for the most part tolerant, jovial.

’Let him speak!  ‘Ear him!  Hoy!  Hoy!’

The chairman interposes, but by the time that order is restored the Conservative working man has thrust his hat upon his head and is off to the nearest public-house, muttering oaths.

Mr. Cullen rises, at the same time rises Mr. Cowes.  These two gentlemen are fated to rise simultaneously.  They scowl at each other.  Mr. Cullen begins to speak, and Mr. Cowes, after a circular glance of protest, resumes his seat.  The echoes tell that we are in for oratory with a vengeance.  Mr. Cullen is a short, stout man, very seedily habited, with a great rough head of hair, an aquiline nose, lungs of vast power.  His vein is King Cambyses’; he tears passion to tatters; he roars leonine; he is your man to have at the pamper’d jades of Asia!  He has got hold of a new word, and that the verb to ‘exploit.’  I am exploited, thou art exploited,—­he exploits!  Who?  Why, such men as that English duke whom the lecturer gripped and flagellated.  The English duke is Mr. Cullen’s bugbear; never a speech from Mr. Cullen but that duke is most horribly mauled.  His ground. rents,—­yah!  Another word of which Mr. Cullen is fond is ’strattum,’—­usually spelt and pronounced with but one t midway.  You and I have the misfortune to belong to a social ‘strattum’ which is trampled flat and hard beneath the feet of the landowners.  Mr. Cullen rises to such a point of fury that one dreads the consequences—­to himself.  Already the chairman is on his feet, intimating in dumb show that the allowed ten minutes have elapsed; there is no making the orator hear.  At length his friend who sits by him fairly grips his coat-tails and brings him to a sitting posture, amid mirthful tumult.  Mr. Cullen joins in the mirth, looks as though he had never been angry in his life.  And till next Sunday comes round he will neither speak nor think of the social question.