Then Mannering began to understand.

"I oppose the scheme you speak of," he answered, "simply because I don't
believe in it. Every man has a right to his opinion. I don't believe for
a moment that it would improve the present condition of things."

"Then what is your scheme?" Fardell asked.

"My scheme!" Mannering repeated. "I don't quite understand you!"

"Of course you don't," Fardell answered, vigourously. "You can weave
academic arguments, you can make figures and statistics dance to any
damned tune you please. If I tried to argue with you, you'd squash me
flat. And what's it all come to? My pals must starve for the
gratification of your intellectual vanity. You won't listen to Tariff
Reform. Then what do you propose, to light the forges and fill the
mills? Nothing! I say, unless you've got a counter scheme of your own,
you ought to try ours."

"Come, Mr. Fardell," Mannering said, "I can assure you that all I have
said and written is the outcome of honest thought. I--"

"Stop!" Fardell exclaimed. "Honest thought! Yes! Where? In your study.
That's where you theorists do your mischief. You can't make laws for the
people in your study. You can't tell the status of the workingman from
the figures you read in your study. You're like half the smug people in
the world who discuss this question in the railway carriages and in their
clubs. I've heard 'em till I'd like to shove their self-opinionated
arguments down their throats, strip their clothes off their backs, and
send them down to live with my pals, or starve with them. Any little