Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/261

Rh that's one good thing. Bad liquor will be swept away with other bad articles. Trade will prosper—and what's trade now without steam? and what is steam without coal? And mark you this, gentlemen—there's no man and no government can make coal."

A brief loud "Haw, haw," showed that this fact was appreciated.

"Nor freeston' nayther," said a wide-mouthed wiry man called Gills, who wished for an exhaustive treatment of the subject, being a stone-cutter.

"Nor freestone, as you say; else, I think, if coal could be made aboveground, honest fellows who are the pith of our population would not have to bend their backs and sweat in a pit six days out of the seven. No, no: I say, as this country prospers it has more and more need of you, sirs. It can do without a pack of lazy lords and ladies, but it can never do without brave colliers. And the country will prosper. I pledge you my word, sirs, this country will rise to the tip-top of everything, and there isn't a man in it but what shall have his joint in the pot, and his spare money jingling in his pocket, if we only exert ourselves to send the right men to Parliament—men who will speak up for the collier, and the stone-cutter, and