Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/118

 This effect, however, was not without an efficient cause. Apart from the fact that the Morpeth register was in a condition exceptionally favorable to the return of a genuine working-man, Mr. Burt was in reality, with all his seeming diffidence and meagre presence, an exceedingly formidable candidate. He is able and "canny" to a degree, and conspicuously devoid of those faults that do more easily beset trades-union leaders. He never, for example, speaks on any subject with which he is not thoroughly conversant, and his range of topics is by no means limited. He never tells you on the first occasion that you are alone with him, that every other exponent of the claims of labor, except himself, is a fool or a knave; and, when he makes an engagement, he keeps it with all the punctuality of a good middle-class man of business who knows the value of time. He is, in truth, a singularly fair-minded man, as capable of looking at any issue arising in the labor market from the point of view of the employer as of the employed. From contact and observation he has learned to combine, in a great measure, the characteristic virtues of both classes, while discarding their special vices. His sympathies are, of course, entirely with the working-man; but the impartiality of his judgment saves him from any thing like indiscriminate partisanship.

His workingmanism, too, is of such a catholic kind as practically to obliterate the hateful distinctions of class altogether. It does not stop at hand-workers, but embraces all honest brain-workers as well. It is only with the monstrous army of royal and aristocratic Do-nothings and Eat-alls, which in this England of ours is permitted to such an unparalleled extent to lay waste