A breath can make them as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
"Bold peasantry," "stalwart yeomen," "hard-handed farmers"—what preposterous phrases these seem now when we have the immense advantages of "cheap labor"!
And we here in America—we too? But of us, anon, anon.
Great factories, great halls, great shops, abound—abound and magnify that English land, so that a glamour has come over mankind, and moon-faced idiots in all lands have cried, "Behold the glory of England. Let us do likewise." Those great cities have glorified themselves and have glorified England, and who has cared to look deeper down into the mire? Have we seen these men and women, childhood and age, reeking in squalor and vile with filth in the purlieus of every temple? Have we looked into the slums of Liverpool and Glasgow, of Edinburgh and Newcastle, to see men and women, childhood and age, in all their divinity—or their damnation? Is all lovely—is it indeed? Is this "progress"? Is it civilization? Is it Christianity? Of course it is, all three.
I have mentioned the word revolution—social revolution. What is it? Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and machinery is doing something. It is quite clear that every machine does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek other means of support—they and their wives and their little ones.
It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right. I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work somewhere. But if man's "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie down and make his bed in your pockets, and feed on the contents in the shape of taxes—what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or he will deplete you. How to deplete him is a most interesting question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no continence among them—none anywhere except in wicked France.
In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?
"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"