are so linked together that a shock given to any one would electrify the whole mass of evil. Take an instance. Suppose that those who have the means bestir themselves to improve the houses of the poor. See what good will flow from that. Physical suffering is diminished; but that is, perhaps, the least thing. Cleanly and economical habits are formed; domestic occupations are increased; more persons live through the working period of life; and a class is formed low down in the body politic who are attached to something, for a man who has the tenancy of a good house to lose, is not altogether destitute. And under what circumstances is all this done? By the more influential classes taking a kindly concern in a matter in which all are deeply interested. This is not the least part of the good. Indeed, without it, all the rest, however excellent in itself, would lack its most engaging features. Seeing then in one instance how much good may be done even with slight efforts, we may determine to resist despondency. To yield to it, even but
a little, is to help in building up the trophy for the other side.
Although we must not listen to despondency, we must not, on the other hand, attempt to conceal from ourselves that this subject, the “condition of England question” as it has been called, is oppressively large; or suppose that it can be dealt with otherwise than by ever-growing vigour. At the present moment public attention is unusually fixed upon it. But this may be of brief duration. The public soon becomes satiated with any subject. Some foreign war, or political contest, may all at once turn its looks in far other directions. But the social remedies that we have been talking of, are not things to be finished by a single stroke. We cannot expect to complete them just while the daylight of public opinion is with us. The evil to be struggled against is a thing entwined with every fibre of the body politic. It is enough to occupy the whole mind of the age; and demands the best energies of the best minds. It should be a “Thirty years’ war” against
sloth and neglect. It requires men who will persevere through public favour or disfavour, who can subdue their own fastidiousness, be indifferent to ingratitude, tolerant of folly, who can endure the extreme vexation of seeing their most highly prized endeavours thwarted by well intentioned friends, and who are not dependent for reward upon those things which are addressed to vanity or to ambition.
After a long fit of distress which, for the poorer classes, may almost be called a seven years’ famine, we are now apparently entering upon one of our periodic times of prosperity. You hear of thousands of additional “hands” being wanted, of new mills rising up, and at last of a revival of the home trade. It is one of those “breathing spaces” in which we can look back with less despondency, and forward with some deliberation. Each man’s apprehensions for his own fortunes need no longer absorb his whole attention. Yet one cannot observe all this
clashing and whizzing of machinery, this crowding on our quays, this contention of railway projects, and the general life and hum of renewed activity, without a profound fear and sadness lest such things should pass on, as their predecessors have passed, leaving only an increased bulk of unhandy materials to be dealt with. It is one of those periods upon which the historian, armed with all that wisdom which a knowledge of the result can furnish him, may thus dilate in measured sentences. “A time of nearly seven years of steady distress had now elapsed; nor can it be said, that this distress had been lightly regarded by thoughtful minds, or that its salutary process had not commenced. The question of the condition of the labouring classes had in a measure become prominent. The Essayist moralized about it after his fashion; the lover of statistics arrayed his fearful lists of figures to show its nature and extent; the writer of fiction wove it into his tale; the journalist found it a topic not easily to be exhausted:
old men shook their heads over it; and the young, to the astonishment of the world, began to talk of it as a matter of pressing interest to them. Now was the time when Great Britain might have looked into this question. But a return of prosperity, which we must almost call insidious, lulled attention. Sickness and adversity are soon forgotten. And this nation awoke as from a bad dream which it was by no means desirous of recalling in its daylight reminiscences.” My friends, let us not give an opportunity to the historian to moralize upon us in this manner. If we are employers of labour, let us bethink ourselves that now is the time for persuading our men to do something for themselves; now is the time for getting improvements made in our town and neighbourhood, the public being in a cheerful mood; now, too, we can ourselves adventure something for the good of those around us. Do not let us be anxious to drain the cup of prosperity to its last drop, holding it up so that we see nothing but it. Let us carry ourselves
forward in imagination, and then look backward on what we are doing now. That is the way to master the present, for the best part of foresight is in the reflex. What matter is it how many thousands of pounds we make, compared to how we make them?
“Yes,” some one will reply, “the imaginary historian deserves to be heard. This is the time for the nation to do something. Really a Government with a surplus should put all things to rights.” Oh, these unhappy collective nouns, what have they not to answer for! This word “nation,” for instance: we substitute it instead of writing down some millions of names, a convenience not altogether to be despised. But yours, my friend, is there. The word nation is not an abstract idea; but means an aggregate of human beings. No individual man is eliminated by this process of abbreviation. Your being one of a nation is to enrich you with duties, not to deprive you of them. But these large words often soothe us into obliviousness. It puts one in mind of long algebraical
operations in which the student has wholly lost sight of reality, and is driving on his symbols, quite unable to grasp their significance. This may be well enough for him, for eventually some result comes out which can be verified. But if we, in active life, play with general terms, we do not come to such distinct results, but only get into profound confusion, as it will be in this case, if we expect great things to happen from some combined effort in their corporate capacity of those who, as individuals, are looking on.