Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 2).djvu/184

 course, starving folk cannot be satisfied or settled folk. The country's not in a safe condition;—I'll say so mich!"

"But what can be done? What more can I do, for instance?"

"Do?—ye can do naught mich, poor young lass! Ye've gi'en your brass: ye've done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye'd happen do better. Folks hate him."

"William, for shame!" exclaimed Caroline, warmly. "If folks do hate him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody; he only wants to do his duty, and maintain his rights: you are wrong to talk so!"

"I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond' Moore."

"But," interposed Shirley, "supposing Moore was driven from the country, and his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?"

"They'd have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns, he cannot better himself, and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to the devil: scoundrels that reckons to be the 'people's friends,' and that knows naught about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer. I've lived aboon forty year in the world, and I believe that 'the people' will never have any true friends but theirsel'n, and them two or three good folk i' different stations, that is