Page:Gaskell - North and South, vol. I, 1855.djvu/199

 "We will read Plato's Republic as soon as we have finished Homer."

"Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are all—men, women, and children—fit for a republic: but give me a constitutional monarchy in our present state of morals and intelligence. In our infancy we require a wise despotism to govern us. Indeed, long past infancy, children and young people are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a discreet, firm authority. I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider our people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so. I maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be an autocrat. I will use my best discretion—from no humbug or philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the North—to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my business—laws and decisions which work for my own good in the first instance—for theirs in the second; but I will neither be forced to give my reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my resolution. Let them turn out! I shall suffer as well as they: but at the end they will find I have not bated nor altered one jot."

Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her work; but she did not speak. Mr. Hale answered—

"I dare say I am talking in great ignorance; but from the little I know, I should say that the masses were already passing rapidly into the troublesome