Many things for the Working Aristocracy, in their exteme need, to consider. A national Existence supposed to depend on 'selling cheaper' than any other People. Let inventive men try to invent a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be somewhat justlier divided. Many 'imposibilities' will have to become possible. Supply-and-demand: For what noble work was there ever yet any audible 'demand' in that poor sense?
Chap. X. Plugson of Undershot
Man's Philosophies usually the 'supplement of his practice:' Symptoms of social death. Cash-Payment: The Plugson Ledger, and the Tablets of heaven's Chancery, discrepant exceedingly. All human things do require to have an Ideal in them. How murderous fighting became a 'glorious Chivalry.' Noble devout-hearted Chevaliers. Ignoble Bucaniers and Chactaw Indians: Howel Davies, Napoleon flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter end of him sternly compensating for the beginning. The indomitable Plugson, as yet a Bacanier and Chactaw. William Conqueror and his Norman followers. Organisation of Labour: Courage, there are yet many brave men in England!
Chap. XI. Labour
A perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Significance of the Potter's Wheel. Blessed is he who has found his Work; let him ask no other blessedness. A brave Sir Christopher, and his Paul's Cathedral: Every noble work at first 'impossible.' Columbus royalest Sea-king of all: a depth of Silence, deeper than the Sea; a silence unsoundable; known to God only.
Chap. XII. Reward
Work is worship: Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven. One monster there is in the world, the idle man. 'Fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work,' the most unrefusable demand. The 'wages' of every noble Work in Heaven, or else Nowhere: The brave man has to give his Life away. He that works bodies forth the form of Things Unseen. Strange mystic affinity of Wisdom and Insanity: All Work, in its degree, a making of Madness sane. Labour not a devil, even when encased in Mammonism: The unredeemed ugliness, a slothful People. The vulgarist Plugson of a Master-Worker, not a man to strangle by Corn-Laws and Shotbelts.
Chap. XIII. Democracy
Man must actually have his debts and earnings a little better paid by man. At no time was the lot of the dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as now. Sisterhood, brotherhood often forgotten, but never before so expressly denied. Mungo Park and his poor Black Benefactress. Gurth, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon: Liberty a divine thing; but 'liberty to die by starvation' not so divine. Nature's Aristocracies. William Conqueror, a resident House-Surgeon provided by nature for her beloved English People. Democracy, the despair of finding Heroes to govern us, and contented putting-up with the want of them. The very Tailor unconsciously symbolising the reign of Equality. Wherever ranks do actually exist, strict division of costumes will also be enforced. Freedom from oppression, an indispensable yet most insignificant portion of Human Liberty. A best path does exist for every man; a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do. Mock Superiors and Real Superiors.
Chap. XIV. Sir Jabesh Windbag