Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/132

not man for property. But he contented himself with asking,—

'You think, then, my lord, that, in the present state of society, no dead lift can be given to the condition—in plain English, the wages—of working men, without the destruction of property?'

Lord Minchampstead smiled, and parried the question.

'There may be other dead-lift ameliorations, my young friend, besides a dead lift of wages.'

So Lancelot thought, also; but Lord Minchampstead would have been a little startled could he have seen Lancelot's notion of a dead lift. Lord Minchampstead was thinking of cheap bread and sugar. Do you think that I will tell you of what Lancelot was thinking?

But here Vieuxbois spurred in to break a last lance. He had been very much disgusted with the turn the conversation was taking, for he considered nothing more heterodox than the notion that the poor were to educate themselves. In his scheme, of course, the clergy and the gentry were to educate the poor, who were to take down thankfully as much as it was thought proper to give them; and all beyond was 'self-will' and 'private judgment,' the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, Trades'-union strikes and French Revolutions, et si qua alia.

'And pray, Mr. Smith, may I ask what limit you would put to education?'

'The capacities of each man,' said Lancelot. 'If