MORE REBELLION

But when the discontented man spoke of freedom abroad, the people made out that all devilment was due to foreign rule. "We must fight again," they said, "it's foreign rule is the curse. We were all slaves together, harried in the woods, and we'll be slaves till the end unless we fight. Stand by your leaders, good men, and soon the old stock will be free in the land."

The unhappy wretch was mystified. Well he knew the high-up noble people, and he rejoiced at their downfall. But wasn't it the home people who used to have him cutting bait, and there plenty of fish in the sea? Still, he took heart at the thought of freedom, and started drilling in the byeways and the woods, with the thought of freedom in his soul.

And when he told his wife the new turn of things she smiled a thin smile.

"So we're all to have our rights! Glory be to God, the fine men that's living these days, with the end of all trouble and care. See what's in the pot, my darling man. I'm a little faint with the news." "The pot is empty."

"Look in it again, dear. It can't be empty in times the like of this."

"Is it tormenting me you are? Is it the whole world changed you want, between day and dark? How would it be full, and foreign rule in the land?"

"Don't scowl at me the like of that, frightening your poor wife. How can I tell what's in your mind, and you off drilling in the woods, terrifying the poor birds with your woodeny gun. It's only think

ing they were so mad about you that they might be after filling the pot."

"Who's mad about me, I'd like to know, and I friendless only for my neighbors?"

"Who's mad about you? Isn't it craving to get you justice they are, the leaders in the land?"

"Aye, it's freeing the nation some of them are, and much too busy to bother with the likes of me. I tell you this is the time we'll fight like men. We'll-"

"Fight, indeed. It's well I know you'll fight, and leave me here to myself, with my sorrow and sense. A free nation,' God help us, and your own chieftains the stern taskmasters in the land. I hear them with their talk about foreign rulers and the rest. And what voice will they give you, I wonder, in the rule that is to come? The strong men go prancing up and down today, and they fat up to the eyes, but they tell us that foreign rule has them demolished, and we're lucky to be let live. Is it anything different we'll get from the old stock, in the end of all? We're the sparrows that can't fall to earth, a single one of us, without a sparrow-hawk falling on top of us."

"I'm afraid you're growing bitter with the weight of your cares. Aren't we all the one people? Won't we be a free nation?"

"Yes, we're all the one people, indeed, so long as you're contented with an empty pot. Sometimes I do be wondering if it's in this world you belong at all, or some fairy place of your own. Once I was like yourself, with great faith in our own stock, and believing they had justice in their minds. But it's strange the double meanings of the simplest words,

Our justice is a share in toil and reward. But their justice is the bargain they drive, and making you live up to the bargain. They preach freedom for us all, but they only act it for themselves. It's men of our own blood that do be grabbing more, because we're grabbing less. A free nation, in throth, with every man rivalling every other man, and flourishing chieftains of our own."

Maybe we'll have rules of our own, that'll get us justice for all. There's no hope in those foreign blackguards. I'll stand by my own, and fight for freedom against all."

"And what about cutting bait, I'd like to know? You've forgot your old story about fighting for your rights."

"I'll have my rights when we're free."

No, my gallant man, you'll be just as far from justice as you were before."

"Perhaps there's no such thing as justice. God knows what put it in my head. Sometimes it's like a dream a million years old. I'll be content if the country is free."

content. Before the We'll be all one peo

"Well, then, I won't be country was born, I was born. ple when we've the same justice in mind. Let you free the nation, and welcome, but remember your own words. It's justice I'm dreaming of, and my dream is a million years old."

AN ECONOMIC APPROACH

NOT SO SIMPLE

THERE are still people in England and America who hold that parliament is the satisfactory instrument, not of a governing class, but of the whole people. A fixed idea like this precludes political wisdom. The first and fundamental fact about government is its reference to a governing class, with the interest of that class providing a bias. The bias is not always conscious or constant, but it is prevalent. When Peter Pan soars upward the children in the theatre look wonderingly on him. He flies! In the fairy tale of politics there is a good deal of this flying by the aid of invisible wires. The interests of property are not unremittingly selfish and politicians are not unremittingly obedient to them, but it is well to remember that the continuance of politicians, their place in the governing scheme, responds with great fidelity to existing economic power.

Nothing is so simple, I admit, as my Irishman seems to think. He knows poverty and hates it. He has the first real requirement of the reformer but for the solution of poverty his notions are not organized. And it is not so easy to organize them. We have, for example, the word of Mr. Graham Wallas that thirty years ago he and Bernard Shaw

and Sidney Webb and Sidney Olivier formed a reading circle at Hampstead to study the Marxian economics. These men had the same sympathies as Karl Marx and they expected to agree with him, but from the beginning they found themselves criticizing him. They ended by not only disagreeing with him but by disagreeing in some essential considerations among themselves.

There was, to start with, the Ricardian law of rent. "It was on this point," says Mr. Wallas, "that we first definitely disagreed with Marx. Instead of taking surplus value in the lump, we divided it into the three 'rents' of land, capital, and ability, and faced the fact that, if he worked with the worst land, tools, and brains, 'in cultivation,' the worstpaid laborer might be producing no more wealth than he consumed. This led us to abandon 'abstract labor' as the basis of value, and to adopt Jevons's conception of value as fixed by the point where 'marginal effort' coincided with 'marginal utility.'"

Here you have the sort of thing that really makes a needy man pause. If Lord Selborne and Lord Lansdowne abandoned "abstract labor " as the basis of value, he would take their pained decision under advisement. But the disinterestedness of the Hampstead group compels a different attitude. It holds up any poor man who has an open mind.

An apparent laxity comes with sophistication. "It was this rejection of Marxism," continues Mr. Wallas, "which made possible our partial 'permeation' of liberal and other non-socialist political or