Past and Present Part 23

An idle Governing Cla.s.s addressing its Workers with an indictment of 'Over-production.' Duty of justly apportioning the Wages of Work done. A game-preserving Aristocracy, guiltless of producing or apportioning anything. Owning the soil of England. (p. 213.)--The Working Aristocracy steeped in ign.o.ble Mammonism: The Idle Aristocracy, with its yellow parchments and pretentious futilities.

(216.)

Chap. VIII. _Unworking Aristocracy._

Our Land the _Mother_ of us all: No true Aristocracy but must possess the Land. Men talk of 'selling' Land: Whom it belongs to. Our much-consuming Aristocracy: By the law of their position bound to furnish guidance and governance. Mad and miserable Corn-Laws. (p.

218.)--The Working Aristocracy, and its terrible New-Work: The Idle Aristocracy, and its horoscope of despair. (222.)--A High Cla.s.s without duties to do, like a tree planted on precipices. In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did n.o.bleness ever lie. The Pagan Hercules; the Czar of Russia.

(223.)--Parchments, venerable and not venerable. Benedict the Jew, and his usuries. No Chapter on the Corn-Laws: The Corn-Laws too mad to have a Chapter. (225.)

Chap. IX. _Working Aristocracy._

Many things for the Working Aristocracy, in their extreme 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 'impossibles' will have to become possible. (p.

228.)--Supply-and-demand: For what n.o.ble work was there ever yet any audible 'demand' in that poor sense? (232.)

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. (p. 235.)--All human things do require to have an Ideal in them. How murderous Fighting became a 'glorious Chivalry.' n.o.ble devout-hearted Chevaliers. Ign.o.ble Bucaniers and Chactaw Indians: Howel Davies. Napoleon flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter end of him sternly compensating for the beginning. (237.)--The indomitable Plugson, as yet a Bucanier and Chactaw. William Conqueror and his Norman followers. Organisation of Labour: Courage, there are yet many brave men in England! (240.)

Chap. XI. _Labour._

A perennial n.o.bleness 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. (p. 244.)--A brave Sir Christopher, and his Paul's Cathedral: Every n.o.ble work at first 'impossible.' Columbus royalest Sea-king of all: A depth of Silence, deeper than the Sea; a Silence unsoundable; known to G.o.d only. (246.)

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. (p. 250.)--'Fair day's-wages for a fair days-work,' the most unrefusable demand. The 'wages' of every n.o.ble 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. (253.)--Labour not a devil, even when encased in Mammonism: The unredeemed ugliness, a slothful People. The vulgarest Plugson of a Master-Worker, not a man to strangle by Corn-Laws and s...o...b..lts. (257.)

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. (p. 260.)--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.

(263.)--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.

(267.)--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. (269.)

Chap. XIV. _Sir Jabesh Windbag._

Oliver Cromwell, the remarkablest Governor we have had for the last five centuries or so: No volunteer in Public Life, but plainly a balloted soldier: The Government of England put into his hands. (p.

275.)--Windbag, weak in the faith of a G.o.d; strong only in the faith that Paragraphs and Plausibilities bring votes. Five years of popularity or unpopularity; and _after_ those five years, an Eternity.

Oliver has to appear before the Most High Judge: Windbag, appealing to 'Posterity.' (276.)

Chap. XV. _Morrison again._

New Religions: This new stage of progress, proceeding 'to invent G.o.d,'

a very strange one indeed. (p. 280.)--Religion, the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of a man's soul. Infinite difference between a Good man and a Bad. The great Soul of the World, just and not unjust: Faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual 'prayer.' Penalties: The French Revolution, cruelest Portent that has risen into created s.p.a.ce these ten centuries. Man needs no 'New Religion;' nor is like to get it: Spiritual Dastardism, and sick folly. (281.)--One Liturgy which does remain forever unexceptionable, that of _Praying by Working_.

Sauerteig on the symbolic influences of Washing. Chinese Pontiff-Emperor and his significant 'punctualities.' (287.)--Goethe and German Literature. The great event for the world, now as always, the arrival in it of a new Wise Man. Goethe's _Mason-Lodge_. (292.)

BOOK IV.--HOROSCOPE.

Chap. I. _Aristocracies._

To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled: A G.o.dless century, looking back to centuries that were G.o.dly. (p.

297.)--A new real Aristocracy and Priesthood. The n.o.ble Priest always a n.o.ble _Aristos_ to begin with, and something more to end with.

Modern Preachers, and the _real_ Satanas that now is. Abbot-Samson and William-Conqueror times. The mission of a Land Aristocracy a _sacred_ one, in both senses of that old word. Truly a 'Splendour of G.o.d' did dwell in those old rude veracious ages. Old Anselm travelling to Rome, to appeal against King Rufus. Their quarrel at bottom a great quarrel.

(299.)--The boundless Future, predestined, nay already extant though unseen. Our Epic, not _Arms and the Man_, but _Tools and the Man_; an infinitely wider kind of Epic. Important that our grand Reformation were begun. (308.)

Chap. II. _Bribery Committee._

Our theory, perfect purity of Tenpound Franchise; our practice, irremediable bribery. Bribery, indicative not only of length of purse, but of brazen dishonesty: Proposed improvements. A Parliament, starting with a lie in its mouth, promulgates strange horoscopes of itself. (p. 312.)--Respect paid to those worthy of no respect: Pandarus Dogdraught. The indigent discerning Freeman; and the kind of men he is called upon to vote for. (315.)

Chap. III. _The one Inst.i.tution._

The 'Organisation of Labour,' if well understood, the Problem of the whole Future. Governments of various degrees of utility. Kilkenny Cats; Spinning-Dervishes; Parliamentary Eloquence. A Prime-Minister who would dare believe the heavenly omens. (p. 318.)--Who can despair of Governments, that pa.s.ses a Soldier's Guard-house?--Incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, can be made of men.

Organisms enough in the dim huge Future; and 'United Services' quite other than the red-coat one. (321.)--Legislative interference between Workers and Master-Workers increasingly indispensable. Sanitary Reform: People's Parks: A right Education Bill, and effective Teaching Service. Free bridge for Emigrants: England's sure markets among her Colonies. London the _All-Saxon-Home_, rendezvous of all the 'Children of the Harz-Rock.' (326.)--The English essentially conservative: Always the invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old, to admit the _minimum_ of New. Yet new epochs do actually come; and with them new peremptory necessities. A certain Editor's stipulated work. (330.)

Chap. IV. _Captains of Industry._

Government can do much, but it can in nowise do all. Fall of Mammon: To be a n.o.ble Master among n.o.ble Workers, will again be the first ambition with some few. (p. 333.)--The leaders of Industry, virtually the Captains of the World: Doggeries and Chivalries. Isolation, the sum-total of wretchedness to man. All social growths in this world have required organising; and Work, the grandest of human interests, does now require it. (335.)

Chap V. _Permanence._

The 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hindrances, discouragements and 'impossibilities,' that which distinguishes the Species Man from the Genus Ape. Month-long contracts, and Exeter-Hall purblindness. A practical manufacturing Quaker's care for his workmen.

(p. 341.)--Blessing of Permanent Contract: Permanence in all things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest possible. Vagrant Sam-Slicks. The wealth of a man the number of things he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by. (344.) The Worker's _interest_ in the enterprise with which he is connected. How to reconcile Despotism with Freedom. (346.)

Chap. VI. _The Landed._

A man with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds a day, given him freely, without condition at all, might be a rather strong Worker: The sad reality, very ominous to look at. Will he awaken, be alive again; or is this death-fit very death?--Goethe's Duke of Weimar. Doom of Idleness. (p. 348.)--To sit idle aloft, like absurd Epicurus'-G.o.ds, a poor life for a man. Independence, 'lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye:' Rejection of sham Superiors, the needful preparation for obedience to _real_ Superiors. (351.)

Chap. VII. _The Gifted._

Tumultuous anarchy calmed by n.o.ble effort into fruitful sovereignty.

Mammon, like Fire, the usefulest of servants, if the frightfulest of masters. Souls to whom the omnipotent guinea is, on the whole, an impotent guinea: Not a May-game is this man's life, but a battle and stern pilgrimage: G.o.d's justice, human n.o.bleness, Veracity and Mercy, the essence of his very being. (p. 355.)--What a man of Genius is.