He did not say so, but to him the prosperity of the British manufacturer was bound up in the indigence of the operative.

Thriving workmen, doing well, and looking to do better, rose before him in terms of menace, though their prosperity might be rooted in his own.

"Give them cheap food and keep them poor," was the sum of his advice.

His opinions had the emphasis of the unexpected, the unnatural: he was one of the people whom Wallingham's scheme in its legitimate development of a tariff on foreign manufactures might be expected to enrich.

This fact, which he constantly insisted on, did give them weight; it made him look like a cunning fellow not to be caught with chaff.