ness 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 assent 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 hitherto 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 God, with only some decent Pretence of God.

Governing by the Christian Law of God 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 God'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; toward 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, falicities, 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 finger-post 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-inDanger: 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 godless 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 farthered and pronounced to have truth in them-where is our answer? Neither the "Church" of Hurd and Warburton, nor the Anti-church of Hume and Faine; 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 noble 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 naught, 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-leased, is about to suppress and forget. The Spiritualism of England, for those godless 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 outward from the inner Heart of Man, from the great Heart of Nature, through no Pope or Phillips, has their 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 passing 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: cither way, a very mournful Cant; the Voice not of Nature and Fact, but of something

other than these.

With all its miserable short-comings, 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 desertshrubs of the Tropical swamps have become Cotton trees; and here, under my fartherance, are verily woven shirts-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, steamships, 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 God'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 God to us, but regard it merely as a Voice of earthly Profit-and-Loss. And have a Hell in England-the Hell of not making money. And coldly see the all-conquering valiant Sons of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, in their Poorlaw 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, Competition, and Devil take the hindmost, our latest Gospel yet preached!

As if, in truth, there were no God of Labour; as if godlike 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 God the World-Worker, Demiurgus, and Eternal Maker; noble 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 Class, such as ours, addressing its Workers with an indictment of "Over-production!" Overproduction: runs it not so?"Ye miscellaneous, ignoble manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much! We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made, of fustian, of cassimere, 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, jewelleries, silver forks and epergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofasHeavens, the Commercial Bazaar and multitudinous Howel-and-Jameses cannot contain you. You have produced, produced; he that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of shirts and empty pairs of breeches hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of overproducing you are criminally guilty of producing shirts, 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 shirt-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 shirts. The Community with all its voices commanded them, saying, "Make shirts;" and there the shirts are! Too many shirts? 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 shirts are well apportioned, that our Human Laws be emblem of God's Laws ;" and where is the apportionment? Two million shirtless or ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in Work-house 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 Shores of the Dead Sea. You continue addressing those poor shirt-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 shirts. In the wide domains of created Nature, circulates no shirt or thing of our producing. Certain fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of fair audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we have producod, 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 nation! What would become of you, if we chose, at any time, to decide on growing no wheat more?"

Yes, truly, here is the ultimate rock-basis of all Corn-laws; whereon, at the bottom of much arguing, they rest as securely as they can: What would become of you, if we decided, some day, on growing no more wheat at all? If we chose to grow only partridges henceforth, and a modicum of wheat for our own uses? Cannot we do what we like with our own? Yes, indeed! For my share, if I could melt Gneiss Rock, and create Law of Gravitation; if I could stride out to the Doggerbank some morning, and, striking down my trident there into the mud-waves, say, "Be land, be fields, meadows, mountains, and fresh rolling streams!" by Heaven, I should incline to have the letting of that land in perpetuity, and sell the wheat of it, or burn the wheat of it, according to my own good judgment! My Cornlawing friends, you affright me.

To the "Millo-cracy" so-called, to the Working Aristocracy, steeped too deep in mere ignoble Mammonism, and as yet all unconscious of its noble

destinies, as yet but an irrational or semi-rational giant, struggling to awake some soul in itself-the world will have much to say, reproachfully, reprovingly, admonishingly. But to the Idle Aristocracy, what will the world have to say? Things painful and not pleasant!

To the man who works, who attempts, in never so ungracious barbarous a way, to get forward with some work, you will hasten out with fartherances, with encouragements, corrections; you will say to him, "Welcome, thou art ours; our care shall be of thee." To the idler, again, never so gracefully going idle, coming forward with never so many parchments, you will not hasten out; you will sit still, and be disinclined to rise. You will say to him, "Not welcome, O complex Anomaly; would thou hadst staid out of doors: for who of mortals knows what to do with thee? Thy parchments: yes, they are old, of venerable yellowness; and we too honour parchment, old-established settlements, and venerable use and wont. Old parchments in very truth; yet on the whole, if thou wilt remark, they are young to the Granite Rocks, to the Groundplan of God's Universe! We advise thee to put up thy parchments; to go home to thy place, and make no needless noise whatever. Our heart's wish is to save thee: yet there as thou art, hapless anomaly, with nothing but thy yellow parchments, noisy futilities, and shot-belts and fox-brushes, who of gods or men can avert dark Fate? Be counselled, ascertain if no work exist for thee on God's Earth; if thou find no commanded duty there but that of going gracefully idle. Ask, inquire earnestly, with a half-frantic earnestness; for the answer means Existence or Annihilation to thee. We apprise thee of the worldold fact becoming sternly disclosed again in these days, That he who cannot work in this Universe cannot get existed in it: had he parchments to thatch the face of the world, these combustible fallible sheep-skin cannot avail him. Home, thou unfortunate; and let us have at least no noise from thee !"

Suppose the unfortunate Idle Aristocracy, as the unfortunate Working one has done, were to "retire three days to its bed," and consider itself there, what o'clock it had become?

How have we to regret not only that men have "no religion," but that they have next to no reflection; and go about with heads full of mere extraneoua noises, with eyes wide open but visionless-for most part, in the somnambulist state!

CHAPTER VIII.

UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY.

The

Ir is well said, "Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy;" whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any other, is the Governor, Vice-king of the people on the Land. It is in these days as it was in those of Henry Plantagenet and Abbot Samson; as it will in all days be. Land is Mother of us all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all; in how many ways, from our first wakening to our last sleep on her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with blessed mother-arms, enfold us all! The Hill I first saw the Sun rise over, when the Sun and I and all things were yet in their auroral hour, who can divorce me from it? Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are the roots I have struck into my Native Soil; no tree that grows is rooted so. From noblest Patriotism to humblest industrial Mechanism; from highest dying for your country to lowest quarrying and coal-boring for it, a nation's Life depends upon its Land Again and again we have to say, there can be no true Aristocracy but must possess the Land. Men talk of "selling" Land. Land, it is true, like Epic Poems, and even higher things, in such a trading world, has to be presented in the market for what will bring, and, as we say, be" sold :" but the notion of