Past and Present Part 12

THE ENGLISH.

And yet, with all thy theoretic plat.i.tudes, what a depth of practical sense in thee, great England! A depth of sense, of justice, and courage; in which, under all emergencies and world-bewilderments, and under this most complex of emergencies we now live in, there is still hope, there is still a.s.surance!

The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them. Like the old Romans, and some few others, _their_ Epic Poem is written on the Earth's surface: England her Mark! It is complained that they have no artists: one Shakspeare indeed; but for Raphael only a Reynolds; for Mozart nothing but a Mr. Bishop: not a picture, not a song. And yet they did produce one Shakspeare: consider how the element of Shakspearean melody does lie imprisoned in their nature; reduced to unfold itself in mere Cotton-mills, Const.i.tutional Governments, and suchlike;--all the more interesting when it does become visible, as even in such unexpected shapes it succeeds in doing! Goethe spoke of the Horse, how impressive, almost affecting it was that an animal of such qualities should stand obstructed so; its speech nothing but an inarticulate neighing, its handiness mere _hoof_iness, the fingers all constricted, tied together, the finger-nails coagulated into a mere hoof, shod with iron. The more significant, thinks he, are those eye-flas.h.i.+ngs of the generous n.o.ble quadruped; those prancings, curvings of the neck clothed with thunder.

A Dog of Knowledge has free utterance; but the Warhorse is almost mute, very far from free! It is even so. Truly, your freest utterances are not by any means always the best: they are the worst rather; the feeblest, trivialest; their meaning prompt, but small, ephemeral.

Commend me to the silent English, to the silent Romans. Nay the silent Russians, too, I believe to be worth something: are they not even now drilling, under much obloquy, an immense semi-barbarous half-world from Finland to Kamtschatka, into rule, subordination, civilisation,--really in an old Roman fas.h.i.+on; speaking no word about it; quietly hearing all manner of vituperative Able Editors speak!

While your ever-talking, ever-gesticulating French, for example, what are they at this moment drilling?--Nay of all animals, the freest of utterance, I should judge, is the genus _Simia_: go into the Indian woods, say all Travellers, and look what a brisk, adroit, unresting Ape-population it is!

The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will lie written in the Work he does. To work: why, it is to try himself against Nature, and her everlasting unerring Laws; these will tell a true verdict as to the man. So much of virtue and of faculty did _we_ find in him; so much and no more! He had such capacity of harmonising himself with _me_ and my unalterable ever-veracious Laws; of cooperating and working as _I_ bade him;--and has prospered, and has not prospered, as you see!--Working as great Nature bade him: does not that mean virtue of a kind; nay of all kinds? Cotton can be spun and sold, Lancas.h.i.+re operatives can be got to spin it, and at length one has the woven webs and sells them, by following Nature's regulations in that matter: by not following Nature's regulations, you have them not. You have them not;--there is no Cotton-web to sell: Nature finds a bill against you; your 'Strength' is not Strength, but Futility! Let faculty be honoured, so far as it is faculty. A man that can succeed in working is to me always a man.

How one loves to see the burly figure of him, this thick-skinned, seemingly opaque, perhaps sulky, almost stupid Man of Practice, pitted against some light adroit Man of Theory, all equipt with clear logic, and able anywhere to give you Why for Wherefore! The adroit Man of Theory, so light of movement, clear of utterance, with his bow full-bent and quiver full of arrow-arguments,--surely he will strike down the game, transfix everywhere the heart of the matter; triumph everywhere, as he proves that he shall and must do? To your astonishment, it turns out oftenest No. The cloudy-browed, thick-soled, opaque Practicality, with no logic utterance, in silence mainly, with here and there a low grunt or growl, has in him what transcends all logic-utterance: a Congruity with the Unuttered. The Speakable, which lies atop, as a superficial film, or outer skin, is his or is not his: but the Doable, which reaches down to the World's centre, you find him there!

The rugged Brindley has little to say for himself; the rugged Brindley, when difficulties acc.u.mulate on him, retires silent, 'generally to his bed;' retires 'sometimes for three days together to his bed, that he may be in perfect privacy there,' and ascertain in his rough head how the difficulties can be overcome. The ineloquent Brindley, behold he _has_ chained seas together; his s.h.i.+ps do visibly float over valleys, invisibly through the hearts of mountains; the Mersey and the Thames, the Humber and the Severn have shaken hands: Nature most audibly answers, Yea! The Man of Theory tw.a.n.gs his full-bent bow: Nature's Fact ought to fall stricken, but does not: his logic-arrow glances from it as from a scaly dragon, and the obstinate Fact keeps walking its way. How singular! At bottom, you will have to grapple closer with the dragon; take it home to you, by real faculty, not by seeming faculty; try whether you are stronger, or it is stronger. Close with it, wrestle it: sheer obstinate toughness of muscle; but much more, what we call toughness of heart, which will mean persistence hopeful and even desperate, unsubduable patience, composed candid openness, clearness of mind: all this shall be 'strength' in wrestling your dragon; the whole man's real strength is in this work, we shall get the measure of him here.

Of all the Nations in the world at present the English are the stupidest in speech, the wisest in action. As good as a 'dumb' Nation, I say, who cannot speak, and have never yet spoken,--spite of the Shakspeares and Miltons who show us what possibilities there are!--O Mr. Bull, I look in that surly face of thine with a mixture of pity and laughter, yet also with wonder and veneration. Thou complainest not, my ill.u.s.trious friend; and yet I believe the heart of thee is full of sorrow, of unspoken sadness, seriousness,--profound melancholy (as some have said) the basis of thy being. Unconsciously, for thou speakest of nothing, this great Universe is great to thee. Not by levity of floating, but by stubborn force of swimming, shalt thou make thy way. The Fates sing of thee that thou shalt many times be thought an a.s.s and a dull ox, and shalt with a G.o.dlike indifference believe it. My friend,--and it is all untrue, nothing ever falser in point of fact! Thou art of those great ones whose greatness the small pa.s.ser-by does not discern. Thy very stupidity is wiser than their wisdom. A grand _vis inertiae_ is in thee; how many grand qualities unknown to small men! Nature alone knows thee, acknowledges the bulk and strength of thee: thy Epic, unsung in words, is written in huge characters on the face of this Planet,--sea-moles, cotton-trades, railways, fleets and cities, Indian Empires, Americas, New Hollands; legible throughout the Solar System!

But the dumb Russians too, as I said, they, drilling all wild Asia and wild Europe into military rank and file, a terrible yet hitherto a prospering enterprise, are still dumber. The old Romans also could not _speak_, for many centuries:--not till the world was theirs; and so many speaking Greekdoms, their logic-arrows all spent, had been absorbed and abolished. The logic-arrows, how they glanced futile from obdurate thick-skinned Facts; Facts to be wrestled down only by the real vigour of Roman thews!--As for me, I honour, in these loud-babbling days, all the Silent rather. A grand Silence that of Romans;--nay the grandest of all, is it not that of the G.o.ds! Even Triviality, Imbecility, that can sit silent, how respectable is it in comparison! The 'talent of silence' is our fundamental one. Great honour to him whose Epic is a melodious hexameter Iliad; not a jingling Sham-Iliad, nothing true in it but the hexameters and forms merely. But still greater honour, if his Epic be a mighty Empire slowly built together, a mighty Series of Heroic Deeds,--a mighty Conquest over Chaos; _which_ Epic the 'Eternal Melodies' have, and must have, informed and dwelt in, as it sung itself! There is no mistaking that latter Epic. Deeds are greater than Words. Deeds have such a life, mute but undeniable, and grow as living trees and fruit-trees do; they people the vacuity of Time, and make it green and worthy. Why should the oak prove logically that it ought to grow, and will grow? Plant it, try it; what gifts of diligent judicious a.s.similation and secretion it has, of progress and resistance, of _force_ to grow, will then declare themselves. My much-honoured, ill.u.s.trious, extremely inarticulate Mr. Bull!--

Ask Bull his spoken opinion of any matter,--oftentimes the force of dullness can no farther go. You stand silent, incredulous, as over a plat.i.tude that borders on the Infinite. The man's Churchisms, Dissenterisms, Puseyisms, Benthamisms, College Philosophies, Fas.h.i.+onable Literatures, are unexampled in this world. Fate's prophecy is fulfilled; you call the man an ox and an a.s.s. But set him once to work,--respectable man! His spoken sense is next to nothing, nine-tenths of it palpable _non_sense: but his unspoken sense, his inner silent feeling of what is true, what does agree with fact, what is doable and what is not doable,--this seeks its fellow in the world.

A terrible worker; irresistible against marshes, mountains, impediments, disorder, incivilisation; everywhere vanquis.h.i.+ng disorder, leaving it behind him as method and order. He 'retires to his bed three days,' and considers!

Nay withal, stupid as he is, our dear John,--ever, after infinite tumblings, and spoken plat.i.tudes innumerable from barrel-heads and parliament-benches, he does settle down somewhere about the just conclusion; you are certain that his jumblings and tumblings will end, after years or centuries, in the stable equilibrium. Stable equilibrium, I say; centre-of-gravity lowest;--not the unstable, with centre-of-gravity highest, as I have known it done by quicker people!

For indeed, do but jumble and tumble sufficiently, you avoid that worst fault, of settling with your centre-of-gravity highest; your centre-of-gravity is certain to come lowest, and to stay there. If slowness, what we in our impatience call 'stupidity,' be the price of stable equilibrium over unstable, shall we grudge a little slowness?

Not the least admirable quality of Bull is, after all, that of remaining insensible to logic; holding out for considerable periods, ten years or more, as in this of the Corn-Laws, after all arguments and shadow of arguments have faded away from him, till the very urchins on the street t.i.tter at the arguments he brings.

Logic,--[Greek: Logike], the 'Art of Speech,'--does indeed speak so and so; clear enough: nevertheless Bull still shakes his head; will see whether nothing else _illogical_, not yet 'spoken,' not yet able to be 'spoken,' do not lie in the business, as there so often does!--My firm belief is, that, finding himself now enchanted, hand-shackled, foot-shackled, in Poor-Law Bastilles and elsewhere, he will retire three days to his bed, and _arrive_ at a conclusion or two! His three-years 'total stagnation of trade,' alas, is not that a painful enough 'lying in bed to consider himself'? Poor Bull!

Bull is a born Conservative; for this too I inexpressibly honour him.

All great Peoples are conservative; slow to believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities; deeply and forever certain of the greatness that is in LAW, in Custom once solemnly established, and now long recognised as just and final.--True, O Radical Reformer, there is no Custom that can, properly speaking, be final; none. And yet thou seest _Customs_ which, in all civilised countries, are accounted final; nay, under the Old-Roman name of _Mores_, are accounted _Morality_, Virtue, Laws of G.o.d Himself. Such, I a.s.sure thee, not a few of them are; such almost all of them once were. And greatly do I respect the solid character,--a blockhead, thou wilt say; yes, but a well-conditioned blockhead, and the best-conditioned,--who esteems all 'Customs once solemnly acknowledged' to be ultimate, divine, and the rule for a man to walk by, nothing doubting, not inquiring farther. What a time of it had we, were all men's life and trade still, in all parts of it, a problem, a hypothetic seeking, to be settled by painful Logics and Baconian Inductions! The Clerk in Eastcheap cannot spend the day in verifying his Ready-Reckoner; he must take it as verified, true and indisputable; or his Book-keeping by Double Entry will stand still. "Where is your Posted Ledger?" asks the Master at night.--"Sir," answers the other, "I was verifying my Ready-Reckoner, and find some errors. The Ledger is--!"--Fancy such a thing!

True, all turns on your Ready-Reckoner being moderately correct,--being _not_ insupportably incorrect! A Ready-Reckoner which has led to distinct entries in your Ledger such as these: '_Creditor_ an English People by fifteen hundred years of good Labour; and _Debtor_ to lodging in enchanted Poor-Law Bastilles: _Creditor_ by conquering the largest Empire the Sun ever saw; and _Debtor_ to Donothingism and "Impossible" written on all departments of the government thereof: _Creditor_ by mountains of gold ingots earned; and _Debtor_ to No Bread purchasable by them:'--_such_ Ready-Reckoner, methinks, is beginning to be suspect; nay is ceasing, and has ceased, to be suspect! Such Ready-Reckoner is a Solecism in Eastcheap; and must, whatever be the press of business, and will and shall be rectified a little. Business can go on no longer with _it_. The most Conservative English People, thickest-skinned, most patient of Peoples, is driven alike by its Logic and its Unlogic, by things 'spoken,' and by things not yet spoken or very speakable, but only felt and very unendurable, to be wholly a Reforming People. Their Life, as it is, has ceased to be longer possible for them.

Urge not this n.o.ble silent People; rouse not the Berserkir rage that lies in them! Do you know their Cromwells, Hampdens, their Pyms and Bradshaws? Men very peaceable, but men that can be made very terrible!

Men who, like their old Teutsch Fathers in Agrippa's days, 'have a soul that despises death;' to whom 'death,' compared with falsehoods and injustices, is light;--'in whom there is a rage unconquerable by the immortal G.o.ds!' Before this, the English People have taken very preternatural-looking Spectres by the beard; saying virtually: "And if thou _wert_ 'preternatural'? Thou with thy 'divine-rights' grown diabolic-wrongs? Thou,--not even 'natural;' decapitable; totally extinguishable!"--Yes, just so G.o.dlike as this People's patience was, even so G.o.dlike will and must its impatience be. Away, ye scandalous Practical Solecisms, children actually of the Prince of Darkness; ye have near broken our hearts; we can and will endure you no longer.

Begone, we say; depart, while the play is good! By the Most High G.o.d, whose sons and born, missionaries true men are, ye shall not continue here! You and we have become incompatible; can inhabit one house no longer. Either you must go, or we. Are ye ambitious to try _which_ it shall be?

O my Conservative friends, who still specially name and struggle to approve yourselves 'Conservative,' would to Heaven I could persuade you of this world-old fact, than which Fate is not surer, That Truth and Justice alone are _capable_ of being 'conserved' and preserved!

The thing which is unjust, which is _not_ according to G.o.d's Law, will you, in a G.o.d's Universe, try to conserve that? It is so old, say you?

Yes, and the hotter haste ought _you_, of all others, to be in, to let it grow no older! If but the faintest whisper in your hearts intimate to you that it is not fair,--hasten, for the sake of Conservatism itself, to probe it rigorously, to cast it forth at once and forever if guilty. How will or can you preserve _it_, the thing that is not fair? 'Impossibility' a thousandfold is marked on that. And ye call yourselves Conservatives, Aristocracies:--ought not honour and n.o.bleness of mind, if they had departed from all the Earth elsewhere, to find their last refuge with you? Ye unfortunate!

The bough that is dead shall be cut away, for the sake of the tree itself. Old? Yes, it is too old. Many a weary winter has it swung and creaked there, and gnawed and fretted, with its dead wood, the organic substance and still living fibre of this good tree; many a long summer has its ugly naked brown defaced the fair green umbrage; every day it has done mischief, and that only: off with it, for the tree's sake, if for nothing more; let the Conservatism that would preserve cut _it_ away. Did no wood-forester apprise you that a dead bough with its dead root left sticking there is extraneous, poisonous; is as a dead iron spike, some horrid rusty ploughshare driven into the living substance;--nay is far worse; for in every wind-storm ('commercial crisis' or the like), it frets and creaks, jolts itself to and fro, and cannot lie quiet as your dead iron spike would.

If I were the Conservative Party of England (which is another bold figure of speech), I would not for a hundred thousand pounds an hour allow those Corn-Laws to continue! Potosi and Golconda put together would not purchase my a.s.sent to them. Do you count what treasuries of bitter indignation they are laying up for you in every just English heart? Do you know what questions, not as to Corn-prices and Sliding-scales alone, they are _forcing_ every reflective Englishman to ask himself? Questions insoluble, or hitherto unsolved; deeper than any of our Logic-plummets. .h.i.therto will sound: questions deep enough,--which it were better that we did not name even in thought!

You are forcing us to think of them, to begin uttering them. The utterance of them is begun; and where will it be ended, think you?

When two millions of one's brother-men sit in Workhouses, and five millions, as is insolently said, 'rejoice in potatoes,' there are various things that must be begun, let them end where they can.

CHAPTER VI.

TWO CENTURIES.

The Settlement effected by our 'Healing Parliament' in the Year of Grace 1660, though accomplished under universal acclamations from the four corners of the British Dominions, turns out to have been one of the mournfulest that ever took place in this land of ours. It called and thought itself a Settlement of brightest hope and fulfilment, bright as the blaze of universal tar-barrels and bonfires could make it: and we find it now, on looking back on it with the insight which trial has yielded, a Settlement as of despair. Considered well, it was a Settlement to govern henceforth without G.o.d, with only some decent Pretence of G.o.d.

Governing by the Christian Law of G.o.d had been found a thing of battle, convulsion, confusion, an infinitely difficult thing: wherefore let us now abandon it, and govern only by so much of G.o.d's Christian Law as--as may prove quiet and convenient for us. What is the end of Government? To guide men in the way wherein they should go: towards their true good in this life, the portal of infinite good in a life to come? To guide men in such way, and ourselves in such way, as the Maker of men, whose eye is upon us, will sanction at the Great Day?--Or alas, perhaps at bottom _is_ there no Great Day, no sure outlook of any life to come; but only this poor life, and what of taxes, felicities, Nell-Gwyns and entertainments we can manage to muster here? In that case, the end of Government will be, To suppress all noise and disturbance, whether of Puritan preaching, Cameronian psalm-singing, thieves'-riot, murder, arson, or what noise soever, and--be careful that supplies do not fail! A very notable conclusion, if we will think of it, and not without an abundance of fruits for us.

Oliver Cromwell's body hung on the Tyburn gallows, as the type of Puritanism found futile, inexecutable, execrable,--yes, that gallows-tree has been a fingerpost into very strange country indeed.

Let earnest Puritanism die; let decent Formalism, whatsoever cant it be or grow to, live! We have had a pleasant journey in that direction; and are--arriving at our inn?

To support the Four Pleas of the Crown, and keep Taxes coming in: in very sad seriousness, has not this been, ever since, even in the best times, almost the one admitted end and aim of Government? Religion, Christian Church, Moral Duty; the fact that man had a soul at all; that in man's life there was any eternal truth or justice at all,--has been as good as left quietly out of sight. Church indeed,--alas, the endless talk and struggle we have had of High-Church, Low-Church, Church-Extension, Church-in-Danger: we invite the Christian reader to think whether it has not been a too miserable screech-owl phantasm of talk and struggle, as for a 'Church,'--which one had rather not define at present!

But now in these G.o.dless two centuries, looking at England and her efforts and doings, if we ask, What of England's doings the Law of Nature had accepted, Nature's King had actually furthered and p.r.o.nounced to have truth in them,--where is our answer? Neither the 'Church' of Hurd and Warburton, nor the Anti-Church of Hume and Paine; not in any shape the Spiritualism of England: all this is already seen, or beginning to be seen, for what it is; a thing that Nature does _not_ own. On the one side is dreary Cant, with a _reminiscence_ of things n.o.ble and divine; on the other is but acrid Candour, with a _prophecy_ of things brutal, infernal. Hurd and Warburton are sunk into the sere and yellow leaf; no considerable body of true-seeing men looks thitherward for healing: the Paine-and-Hume Atheistic theory, of 'things well let alone,' with Liberty, Equality and the like, is also in these days declaring itself nought, unable to keep the world from taking fire.

The theories and speculations of both these parties, and, we may say, of all intermediate parties and persons, prove to be things which the Eternal Veracity did not accept; things superficial, ephemeral, which already a near Posterity, finding them already dead and brown-leafed, is about to suppress and forget. The Spiritualism of England, for those G.o.dless years, is, as it were, all forgettable. Much has been written: but the perennial Scriptures of Mankind have had small accession: from all English Books, in rhyme or prose, in leather binding or in paper wrappage, how many verses have been added to these? Our most melodious Singers have sung as from the throat outwards: from the inner Heart of Man, from the great Heart of Nature, through no Pope or Philips, has there come any tone. The Oracles have been dumb. In brief, the Spoken Word of England has not been true. The Spoken Word of England turns out to have been trivial; of short endurance; not valuable, not available as a Word, except for the pa.s.sing day. It has been accordant with transitory Semblance; discordant with eternal Fact. It has been unfortunately not a Word, but a Cant; a helpless involuntary Cant, nay too often a cunning voluntary one: either way, a very mournful Cant; the Voice not of Nature and Fact, but of something other than these.

With all its miserable shortcomings, with its wars, controversies, with its trades-unions, famine-insurrections,--it is her Practical Material Work alone that England has to show for herself! This, and hitherto almost nothing more; yet actually this. The grim inarticulate veracity of the English People, unable to speak its meaning in words, has turned itself silently on things; and the dark powers of Material Nature have answered, "Yes, this at least is true, this is not false!"

So answers Nature. "Waste desert-shrubs of the Tropical swamps have become Cotton-trees; and here, under my furtherance, are verily woven s.h.i.+rts,--hanging unsold, undistributed, but capable to be distributed, capable to cover the bare backs of my children of men. Mountains, old as the Creation, I have permitted to be bored through; bituminous fuel-stores, the wreck of forests that were green a million years ago,--I have opened them from my secret rock-chambers, and they are yours, ye English. Your huge fleets, steams.h.i.+ps, do sail the sea; huge Indias do obey you; from huge _New_ Englands and Antipodal Australias comes profit and traffic to this Old England of mine!" So answers Nature. The Practical Labour of England is _not_ a chimerical Triviality: it is a Fact, acknowledged by all the Worlds; which no man and no demon will contradict. It is, very audibly, though very inarticulately as yet, the one G.o.d's Voice we have heard in these two atheistic centuries.

And now to observe with what bewildering obscurations and impediments all this as yet stands entangled, and is yet intelligible to no man!

How, with our gross Atheism, we hear it not to be the Voice of G.o.d to us, but regard it merely as a Voice of earthly Profit-and-Loss. And have a h.e.l.l in England,--the h.e.l.l of not making money. And coldly see the all-conquering valiant Sons of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille, as if this were Nature's Law;--mumbling to ourselves some vague janglement of Laissez-faire, Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one nexus of man to man: Free-trade, Compet.i.tion, and Devil take the hindmost, our latest Gospel yet preached!

As if, in truth, there were no G.o.d of Labour; as if G.o.dlike Labour and brutal Mammonism were convertible terms. A serious, most earnest Mammonism grown Midas-eared; an unserious Dilettantism, earnest about nothing, grinning with inarticulate incredulous incredible jargon about all things, as the _enchanted_ Dilettanti do by the Dead Sea! It is mournful enough, for the present hour; were there not an endless hope in it withal. Giant Labour, truest emblem there is of G.o.d the World-Worker, Demiurgus, and Eternal Maker; n.o.ble Labour, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the highest throne,--staggering hitherto like a blind irrational giant, hardly allowed to have his common place on the street-pavements; idle Dilettantism. Dead-Sea Apism crying out, "Down with him; he is dangerous!"

Labour must become a seeing rational giant, with a _soul_ in the body of him, and take his place on the throne of things,--leaving his Mammonism, and several other adjuncts, on the lower steps of said throne.

CHAPTER VII.

OVER-PRODUCTION.

But what will reflective readers say of a Governing Cla.s.s, such as ours, addressing its Workers with an indictment of 'Over-production'!

Over-production: runs it not so? "Ye miscellaneous, ign.o.ble manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much! We accuse you of making above two-hundred thousand s.h.i.+rts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made, of fustian, of ca.s.simere, of Scotch-plaid, of jane, nankeen and woollen broadcloth, are they not manifold? Of hats for the human head, of shoes for the human foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with--Nay, what say we hats or shoes? You produce gold-watches, jewelries, silver-forks, and epergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofas--Heavens, the Commercial Bazaar and mult.i.tudinous Howel-and-Jameses cannot contain you. You have produced, produced;--he that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of s.h.i.+rts, and empty pairs of breeches, hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of over-producing: you are criminally guilty of producing s.h.i.+rts, breeches, hats, shoes and commodities, in a frightful over-abundance. And now there is a glut, and your operatives cannot be fed!"

Never surely, against an earnest Working Mammonism was there brought, by Game-preserving aristocratic Dilettantism, a stranger accusation, since this world began. My lords and gentlemen,--why, it was _you_ that were appointed, by the fact and by the theory of your position on the Earth, to 'make and administer Laws,'--that is to say, in a world such as ours, to guard against 'gluts;' against honest operatives, who had done their work, remaining unfed! I say, _you_ were appointed to preside over the Distribution and Apportionment of the Wages of Work done; and to see well that there went no labourer without his hire, were it of money-coins, were it of hemp gallows-ropes: that function was yours, and from immemorial time has been; yours, and as yet no other's. These poor s.h.i.+rt-spinners have forgotten much, which by the virtual unwritten law of their position they should have remembered: but by any written recognised law of their position, what have they forgotten? They were set to make s.h.i.+rts. The Community with all its voices commanded them, saying, "Make s.h.i.+rts;"--and there the s.h.i.+rts are! Too many s.h.i.+rts? Well, that is a novelty, in this intemperate Earth, with its nine-hundred millions of bare backs! But the Community commanded you, saying, "See that the s.h.i.+rts are well apportioned, that our Human Laws be emblem of G.o.d's Laws;"--and where is the apportionment? Two million s.h.i.+rtless or ill-s.h.i.+rted workers sit enchanted in Workhouse Bastilles, five million more (according to some) in Ugolino Hunger-cellars; and for remedy, you say,--what say you?--"Raise _our_ rents!" I have not in my time heard any stranger speech, not even on the Sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea. You continue addressing those poor s.h.i.+rt-spinners and over-producers in really a _too_ triumphant manner!

"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of over-production?

We take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced nothing at all. Not from us proceeds this frightful overplus of s.h.i.+rts. In the wide domains of created Nature circulates no s.h.i.+rt or thing of our producing. Certain fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of fair audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we have produced, and they are openly nailed up there. He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself, let him name what and when. We are innocent of producing;--ye ungrateful, what mountains of things have we not, on the contrary, had to 'consume' and make away with!

Mountains of those your heaped manufactures, wheresoever edible or wearable, have they not disappeared before us, as if we had the talent of ostriches, of cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty to eat? Ye ungrateful!--and did you not grow under the shadow of our wings? Are not your filthy mills built on these fields of ours; on this soil of England, which belongs to--whom think you? And we shall not offer you our own wheat at the price that pleases us, but that partly pleases you? A precious notion! What would become of you, if we chose, at any time, to decide on growing no wheat more?"