I don't propose to vote to make it any bigger--can't
afford it."
He had some followers, but there were also some, like
Young, of the Plough Works, and Windle, who made bicycles,
who announced that there was no need to change their
politics to defeat a measure that had no existence, and
never would have. What sickened them, they declared, was
to see young Murchison allowed to give it so much prominence
as Liberal doctrine. The party had been strong enough to
hold South Fox for the best part of the last twenty years
on the old principles, and this British boot-licking
feature wasn't going to do it any good. It was fool
politics in the opinion of Mr Young and Mr Windle.
Then remained the retail trades, the professions, and
the farmers. Both sides could leave out of their counsels
the interests of the leisured class, since the leisured
class in Elgin consisted almost entirely of persons who
were too old to work, and therefore not influential. The
landed proprietors were the farmers, when they weren't,
alas! the banks. As to the retail men, the prosperity of
the stores of Main Street and Market Street was bound up
about equally with that of Fox County and the Elgin
factories. The lawyers and doctors, the odd surveyors
and engineers, were inclined, by their greater detachment,
to theories and prejudices, delightful luxuries where a
certain rigidity of opinion is dictated by considerations
of bread and butter.
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