that all the time while there's been this vague talk about "bad
times"--income-tax has been steadily increasing, London has been
steadily growing, every outer and visible sign of commercial prosperity
has been steadily spreading. Have our watering-places shrunk? Have our
buildings been getting smaller and less luxurious? If Antwerp has grown,
how about Hull and Cardiff? "Well, perhaps the past is all right; but
consider the future! Eight hours are going to drive capital out of the
country!" Rubbish! I'm not a political economist, thank God; I never
sank quite so low as that. And I'm not speaking for or against Eight
Hours: I'm only discounting some verbose nonsense. But I know enough to
see that the capital of a country can no more be exported than the land
or the houses. Can you drive away the London and North-Western Railway?
Can you drive away the factories of Manchester, the mines of the Black
Country, the canals, the buildings, the machinery, the docks, the plant,
the apparatus? Impossible, on the very face of it! Most of the capital
of a country is fixed in its soil, and can't be uprooted. People fall
into this error about driving away capital because they know you can
sell particular railway shares or a particular factory and leave the
country with the proceeds, provided somebody else is willing to buy; but
you can't sell all the railways and all the factories in a lump, and
clear out with the capital. No, no; England stands where she does,
because God put her there; and until He invents a new order of things
(which may, of course, happen any day--as, for example, if aerial
navigation came in) she must continue, in spite of minor changes, to
maintain in the main her present position.

But a truce to these frivolities! The little Italian boy next door calls
me to play ball with him, with a green lemon from the garden. Vengo,
Luigi, vengo! I return at once to the realities of life, and dismiss
such shadows.