using the word 'practical'), because 'the rich' would be forced to
pay so much for keeping 'the poor' in a tolerable condition that the
condition of riches would become no longer valuable and would
gradually die out. Do you follow me?"

"Partly," said I. "Go on."

Said old Hammond: "Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a
theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but 'practically,' it
turned out a failure."

"How so?" said I.

"Well, don't you see," said he, "because it involved the making of a
machinery by those who didn't know what they wanted the machines to
do. So far as the masses of the oppressed class furthered this
scheme of improvement, they did it to get themselves improved slave-
rations--as many of them as could. And if those classes had really
been incapable of being touched by that instinct which produced the
passion for freedom and equality aforesaid, what would have happened,
I think, would have been this: that a certain part of the working
classes would have been so far improved in condition that they would
have approached the condition of the middling rich men; but below
them would have been a great class of most miserable slaves, whose
slavery would have been far more hopeless than the older class-
slavery had been."

"What stood in the way of this?" said I.

"'Why, of course," said he, "just that instinct for freedom