Three days afterwards he burst into my study unannounced--he
appeared to regard himself as my bosom friend--and asked me to
forgive him for not having called sooner, which I did.
"I met the postman as I was coming along," he said, handing me a
blue envelope, "and he gave me this, for you."
I saw it was an application for the water-rate.
"We must make a stand against this," he continued. "That's for
water to the 29th September. You've no right to pay it in June."
I replied to the effect that water-rates had to be paid, and that
it seemed to me immaterial whether they were paid in June or
September.
"That's not it," he answered, "it's the principle of the thing.
Why should you pay for water you have never had? What right have
they to bully you into paying what you don't owe?"
He was a fluent talker, and I was ass enough to listen to him. By
the end of half an hour he had persuaded me that the question was
bound up with the inalienable rights of man, and that if I paid
that fourteen and tenpence in June instead of in September, I
should be unworthy of the privileges my forefathers had fought and
died to bestow upon me.
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