crowd is convinced; it heaves up all its clubs and axes, and abolishes him.
At least, one of him.

Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people's welfare,
let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward
way, and not in a tail-foremost way. The typical modern movements may be
right; but let them be defended because they are right, not because they
are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man
in the street, who is cold; like mankind before the finding of fire. Do
not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion--like the end
of a red hot poker. Imperialism may be right. But if it is right, it is
right because England has some divine authority like Israel, or some human
authority like Rome; not because we have saddled ourselves with South
Africa, and don't know how to get rid of it. Socialism may be true. But
if it is true, it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare
all land to be common land, not because Harrod's Stores exist and the
commonwealth must copy them. Female suffrage may be just. But if it is
just, it is just because women are women, not because women are sweated
workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to
have been. Let not the Imperialist accept a colony because it is there,
nor the Suffragist seize a vote because it is lying about, nor the
Socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale.

Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want, not what recent legal
decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies proved
that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall
some day want. If there must be a British Empire, let it be British, and
not, in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female
suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male
blackguard or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be Socialism, let