The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude by William Morris
page 40 of 63 (63%)
page 40 of 63 (63%)
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very different matter. Although his remembrance of the _ipsissima verba_
does not quite tally with that of the constable, it is clear that both the Archbishop and the policeman have noted the real significance of what was said: The owners of this capital, said the prisoner-- _J. F_. I said nothing of the kind. _J. N_. Yes you did, sir. Those were the very words you said: I have got it down in my notes of his Grace's evidence. What is the use of your denying it, when your own witness gives evidence of it? Hold your tongue, sir.--And the workingmen, says the prisoner, must take the matter into their own hands. Take it into _their own hands_, gentlemen, and take _the matter_ into their hands. What matter are they to take into their hands? Are we justified in thinking that the prisoner was speaking metaphorically? Gentlemen, I must tell you that the maxim that in weighing evidence you need not go beyond the most direct explanation guides us here; forbids us to think that the prisoner was speaking metaphorically, and compels us to suppose that the _matter_ which is to be in the _hands_ of the workmen, their very _hands_, gentlemen, is--what? Why, (_in an awe-struck whisper_) the bowels of the owners of the capital, that is of this metropolis--London! Nor, gentlemen, are the means whereby those respectable persons, the owners of house property in London, to be disembowelled left doubtful: the raising of armed men by the million, concealed weapons, and an organisation capable of frustrating the search for them. Nay, an article in the paper which impudently calls itself (_reading the_ "_Commonweal_") the official journal of the Socialist League, written by one Bax, who ought to be standing in the same dock with the prisoner--an article in which he attacks the sacredness of civilisation--is murky with the word dynamic or dynamite. And you must not forget, gentlemen, that the prisoner accepts |
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