A short walk carried me to the terrace, and ere long I was being warmly greeted by the only three available members of the family. Mrs. Northerton was too busy with her guests to pay me much attention, so after a few explanations and regrets for the spoilt trip, I was borne off in charge of the genial commissioner.
“Well, how go your election prospects?” he said, as cheerily as if my programme favoured his class.
“Not as well as I could wish. They say I am too moderate for the constituency. You know, of course, that Lawler, a ‘blood and thunder’ tub-thumper, is standing against me in the interests of the extreme party.”
“So I hear, but I should scarcely have thought he would have stood a chance.”
“On the contrary, I assure you he speaks for a numerous and very ugly party—a party which arrears of legislation have done as much as anything to create. Talking of this, I am not at all sure that we may not have trouble before long. I shall do my best to have the peace kept, but there’s no knowing to what the more reckless agitators may drive the mob.”
“There I agree with you, sir,” broke in an acute-looking old gentleman with spectacles; “but how do you reconcile that opinion with your own doctrines? How can you speak and write for socialism when you grumble at its practical enforcement? You state that you oppose revolution, but is a constitutional settlement of the problem possible?”
“Why not? You must remember that a large section of us socialists is against revolution. Looking back at the graduated nature of the transition between feudalism and modern capitalism, these men would meditate, if possible, a similar though perhaps more rapid transition between modern capitalism and socialism. Any sudden metamorphosis of society would, they believe, breed appalling evils. I am quite of this way of thinking myself.”
My interlocutor laughed. He evidently thought me a reasonable enough creature for my kind. The commissioner remarked that it was a pity that all the party were not of my way of thinking.
“But,” I added, “I have no hesitation in saying that if I thought a revolution would pay, for revolution I would declare myself. It is only a question of cost complicated by dangers of reaction and anarchy. The consideration which weighs most with me is the difficulty of organizing and legislating at a time when panic and brutality would be rampant. I know no men competent to stand at the helm in such tempests. Even with civil peace to help us, a settlement would require, to my thinking, years of patient labour. Mere revolutionary conventions, with some ready-made constitution and brand-new panaceas for suffering, would be impotent.”