18 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



certain radius ; they are all within six, or seven, or 

 eight miles, being about the distance that a man or 

 two bent on evil could compass in the night time. 

 But it is not always night ; numerous fires are started 

 in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little 

 food, and clothing, and less fuel at home have been put 

 forward as causes of a chill desperation, ending in 

 crime. On the contrary, these fires frequently occur 

 when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have 

 received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine 

 prices ; hard masters are not specially selected for tho 

 gratification of spite ; good masters suffer equally. 

 What then is the cause ? 



There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which 

 I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which 

 is found in every part of the civilized world; in 

 Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled 

 England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred 

 of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; 

 landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, 

 a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance ; 

 a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as 

 seizes the Lancashire weaver, who kicks his woman's 

 brains out without any special reason for dislike, 

 mingled with and made more terrible by this un- 

 changeable hostility to property and those who own it. 

 No creed, no high moral hopes of the rights of man 

 and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even, 

 nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils ; blow 

 up, burn, smash, annihilate ! A disposition or cha- 

 racter which is not imaginary but a fact, as proved 

 abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on 



