Ahead of His Time

Some little time ago in this Mother of Democracies, a by-election was held in which both candidates came from the same inordinately privileged class of society, and in which the only genuine power among the lower classes was exerted by property owners. A close result led the loser to believe he was in with a chance of deposing his rival, and among the contested votes was that of an alehouse landlord who happened to be one of London's estimated ten thousand black people. No sooner had the man proved his status as a rate-payer than his rights were further questioned, this time on the grounds that he was a blackamoor, either born outside the country or else nothing better than a servant. Later in life he contracted a fever and was compelled to join a government-sponsored forced labour programme. According to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, all this "changes our understanding of British history," presumably because no previous century had hitherto been thought capable of so moderate and sensible a chain of circumstances.