The Crown of Wild Olive

by John Ruskin

  _THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND._

  (_Delivered at the R. A. Institution, Woolwich, December 14, 1869._)

  I would fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, but fear Icould not have found clear words--I cannot easily find them, evendeliberately,--to tell you how glad I am, and yet how ashamed, to acceptyour permission to speak to you. Ashamed of appearing to think that Ican tell you any truth which you have not more deeply felt than I; butglad in the thought that my less experience, and way of life shelteredfrom the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, may haveleft me with something of a child's power of help to you; a sureness ofhope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men whohave done too much not to have often failed in doing all that theydesired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be inmany things apprehensive. For this at least we all know too well, thatwe are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of politicalchange. That a struggle is approaching between the newly-risen power ofdemocracy and the apparently departing power of feudalism; and anotherstruggle, no less imminent, and far more dangerous, between wealth andpauperism. These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same.They are being fought together, and an apparently common interest unitesfor the most part the millionaire with the noble, in resistance to amultitude, crying, part of it for bread and part of it for liberty.

  And yet no two quarrels can be more distinct. Riches--so far from beingnecessary to noblesse--are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, that thefirst character of all the Nobilities which have founded great dynastiesin the world is to be poor;--often poor by oath--always poor bygenerosity. And of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the firstthing history tells you is, that he never kept treasure for himself.

  Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same; but opposite.On the other hand, the causes of anarchy and of the poor are not thesame, but opposite. Side by side, in the same rank, are now indeed setthe pride that revolts against authority, and the misery that appealsagainst avarice. But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy isthe forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. Sothat thus, it has become impossible to give due support to the cause oforder, without seeming to countenance injury; and impossible to pleadjustly the claims of sorrow, without seeming to plead also for those oflicense.

  Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan of thisvarious quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each side. Let us facethat full truth, whatever it may be, and decide what part, according toour power, we should take in the quarrel.

  First. For eleven hundred years, all but five, since Charlemagne set onhis head the Lombard crown, the body of European people have submittedpatiently to be governed; generally by kings--always by single leadersof some kind. But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect,and of late they have many of them concluded, that they have been on thewhole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. Whereupon they say,more and more widely, "Let us henceforth have no kings; and nogovernment at all."

  Now we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in order to seewhat we are to do. And the truth is that the people _have_ beenmisgoverned;--that very little is to be said, hitherto, for most oftheir masters--and that certainly in many places they will try their newsystem of "no masters:"--and as that arrangement will be delightful toall foolish persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones,--andas these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any humansociety,--the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. And theworld may be quite content to endure much suffering with this freshhope, and retain its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of it, till it canendure no more.

  Then, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that one particularform of this past misgovernment has been, that their masters have setthem to do all the work, and have themselves taken all the wages. In aword, that what was called governing them, meant only wearing fineclothes, and living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry tosay, the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you inquireinto the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be the constantstructure of European society for the thousand years of the feudalsystem; it was divided into peasants who lived by working; priests wholived by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; and as theluminous public mind becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it willassuredly not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more;and the devising of other ways will be an agitating business; especiallybecause the first impression of the intelligent populace is, thatwhereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived idle, in the brightages to come, the whole of it may.

  Now, thirdly--and here is much the worst phase of the crisis. This pastsystem of misgovernment, especially during the last three hundred years,has prepared, by its neglect, a class among the lower orders which it isnow peculiarly difficult to govern. It deservedly lost theirrespect--but that was the least part of the mischief. The deadly part ofit was, that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last theirfaculty, of respect;--lost the very capability of reverence, which isthe most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the degree in whichyou can find creatures greater than yourself, to look up to, in thatdegree, you are ennobled yourself, and, in that degree, happy. If youcould live always in the presence of archangels, you would be happierthan in that of men; but even if only in the company of admirableknights and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, andthe more you could reverence their virtue the happier you would be. Onthe contrary, if you were condemned to live among a multitude of idiots,dumb, distorted and malicious, you would not be happy in the constantsense of your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of progressin humanity depend on finding something to reverence; and all thebaseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, bygeneral misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vastpopulace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even thepower and conception of reverence;[139]--which exists only in theworship of itself--which can neither see anything beautiful around it,nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has, towards all goodnessand greatness, no other feelings than those of the lowestcreatures--fear, hatred, or hunger a populace which has sunk below yourappeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond your power in theirmultitude;--whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, nordiscipline, than you can the summer fly.

  It is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to think of it. I have roughly andbroadly put it before you in its darkness. Let us look what we may findof light.

  Only the other day, in a journal which is a fairly representativeexponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for the most part not atall in favor of strikes or other popular proceedings; only about threeweeks since, there was a leader, with this, or a similar, title--"Whatis to become of the House of Lords?" It startled me, for it seemed as ifwe were going even faster than I had thought, when such a question wasput as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal meant chiefly forthe reading of the middle and upper classes. Open or not--the debate isnear. What _is_ to become of them? And the answer to such questiondepends first on their being able to answer another question--"What isthe _use_ of them!" For some time back, I think the theory of the nationhas been, that they are useful as impediments to business, so as to givetime for second thoughts. But the nation is getting impatient ofimpediments to business; and certainly, sooner or later, will think itneedless to maintain these expensive obstacles to its humors. And Ihave not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clearexpression of their own conception of their use. So that it seems thusto become needful for all men to tell them, as our one quiteclear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for many a year,that the use of the Lords of a country is to _govern_ the country. Ifthey answer that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them; if not,that will become of them which must of all things found to have losttheir serviceableness.

  Here, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, for them
, and forus. Will they be lords indeed, and give us laws--dukes indeed, and giveus guiding--princes indeed, and give us beginning, of truer dynasty,which shall not be soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity?Have they themselves sunk so far as not to hope this? Are there yet anyamong them who can stand forward with open English brows, and say,--Sofar as in me lies, I will govern with my might, not for Dieu et _mon_Droit, but for the first grand reading of the war cry, from which thatwas corrupted, "Dieu et Droit?" Among them I know there are some--amongyou, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do this; and inyou is our trust. I, one of the lower people of your country, ask of youin their name--you whom I will not any more call soldiers, but by thetruer name of Knights;--Equites of England. How many yet of you arethere, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger--knightspatient now beyond all former endurance; who still retain the ancientand eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid theweak? To them, be they few or many, we English people call for help tothe wretchedness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolateand deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of their newreligion. "Let the weak do as they can, and the wicked as they will."

  I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest of you, "The timeis past for all that." Gentlemen, it is not so. The time has come for_more_ than all that. Hitherto, soldiers have given their lives forfalse fame, and for cruel power. The day is now when they must givetheir lives for true fame, and for beneficent power: and the work isnear every one of you--close beside you--the means of it even thrustinto your hands. The people are crying to you for command, and you standthere at pause, and silent. You think they don't want to be commanded;try them; determine what is needful for them--honorable for them; showit them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you throughfire. "Govern us," they cry with one heart, though many minds. They_can_ be governed still, these English; they are men still; not gnats,nor serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old masters, andtheir old land. They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there,if you will show them how, there, to live;--or show them even, how,there, like Englishmen, to die.

  "To live in it, as many as may!" How many do you think may? How many_can_? How many do you want to live there? As masters, your first objectmust be to increase your power; and in what does the power of a countryconsist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, orover its souls? What do you mean by a great nation, but a greatmultitude of men who are true to each other, and strong, and of worth?Now you can increase the multitude only definitely--your island has onlyso much standing room--but you can increase the _worth in_definitely. Itis but a little island;--suppose, little as it is, you were to fill itwith friends? You may, and that easily. You must, and that speedily; orthere will be an end to this England of ours, and to all its loves andenmities.

  To fill this little island with true friends--men brave, wise, andhappy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the world's eighteenhundred years of Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, tofill only this little white gleaming crag with happy creatures, helpfulto each other? Africa, and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain,are these not wide enough for the ignorance of our race? have they notspace enough for its pain? Must we remain _here_ also savage,--_here_at enmity with each other,--_here_ foodless, houseless, in rags, indust, and without hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us arelying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable isthe last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creatureand every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was onlyshaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of itwhere peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy,if not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if notby you? Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth;the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by grief? Have wenot a history of which we can hardly think without becoming insolent inour just pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every limit ofcourtesy to other nations, to say how much more we have to be proud ofin our ancestors than they? Among our ancient monarchs, great crimesstand out as monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, according totheir understanding, their benevolence, are constant. The Wars of theRoses, which are as a fearful crimson shadow on our land, represent thenormal condition of other nations; while from the days of the Heptarchydownwards we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the mostvaried and exalted virtue; a heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt,and which even our traitorship, if we are to become traitors to it,cannot sully.

  And this is the race, then, that we know not any more how to govern! andthis the history which we are to behold broken off by sedition! and thisis the country, of all others, where life is to become difficult to thehonest, and ridiculous to the wise! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is tocome just when we have been making swiftest progress beyond the wisdomand wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheelsinstead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackenedevery leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold;our harbors are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die ofhunger.

  Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only. You alone can feedthem, and clothe, and bring into their right minds, for you only cangovern--that is to say, you only can educate them.

  Educate, or govern, they are one and the same word. Education does notmean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teachingthem to behave as they do not behave. And the true "compulsoryeducation" which the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill.It is not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and thetricks of numbers; and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic toroguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, trainingthem into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies andsouls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work; to be done bykindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise,--but aboveall--by example.

  Compulsory! Yes, by all means! "Go ye out into the highways and hedges,and _compel_ them to come in." Compulsory! Yes, and gratis also. _DeiGratia_, they must be taught, as, _Dei Gratia_, you are set to teachthem. I hear strange talk continually, "how difficult it is to makepeople pay for being educated!" Why, I should think so! Do you make yourchildren pay for their education, or do you give it them compulsorily,and gratis? You do not expect _them_ to pay you for their teaching,except by becoming good children. Why should you expect a peasant to payfor his, except by becoming a good man?--payment enough, I think, if weknew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. For that is another of ourgrand popular mistakes--people are always thinking of education as ameans of livelihood. Education is not a profitable business, but acostly one; nay, even the best attainments of it are alwaysunprofitable, in any terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread eitherby its great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts ormanufactures, by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noblescholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always to bebought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. You do not learn thatyou may live--you live that you may learn. You are to spend on NationalEducation, and to be spent for it, and to make by it, not more money,but better men;--to get into this British Island the greatest possiblenumber of good and brave Englishmen. _They_ are to be your "money'sworth."

  But where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be asked. Let us,as quite the first business in this our national crisis, look not onlyinto our affairs, but into our accounts, and obtain some general notionhow we annually spend our money, and what we are getting for it.Observe, I do not mean to inquire into the public revenue only; of thatsome account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can to setdown the items of the national _private_ expenditure; and know what wespend altogether, and how.

  To begin with this matter of education. You probably have nearly allseen the admirable lecture lately given by Captain Maxse, atS
outhampton. It contains a clear statement of the facts at presentascertained as to our expenditure in that respect. It appears that ofour public moneys, for every pound that we spend on education we spendtwelve either in charity or punishment;--ten millions a year inpauperism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. NowCaptain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions public money spenton crime and want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions forprivate charities. My impression is that this is much beneath the truth,but at all events it leaves out of consideration much the heaviest andsaddest form of charity--the maintenance, by the working members offamilies, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the generalcourse of misrule now leaves helpless to be the burden of the rest.

  Now I want to get first at some, I do not say approximate, but at allevents some suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real distress andmisguided life in this country. Then next, I want some fairlyrepresentative estimate of our private expenditure in luxuries. We won'tspend more, publicly, it appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, oneducating men gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what wespend privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let us, at least,quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh, and see that forevery horse we train also a horseman; and that the rider be at least ashigh-bred as the horse, not jockey, but chevalier. Again, we spend eighthundred thousand, which is certainly a great deal of money, in makingrough _minds_ bright. I want to know how much we spend annually inmaking rough _stones_ bright; that is to say, what may be the unitedannual sum, or near it, of our jewellers' bills. So much we pay foreducating children gratis;--how much for educating diamonds gratis? andwhich pays best for brightening, the spirit or the charcoal? Let us getthose two items set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the samekind. _Publicly_ set down. We must not be ashamed of the way we spendour money. If our right hand is not to know what our left does, it mustnot be because it would be ashamed if it did.

  That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. Letevery man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly an account ofhis income, and of the main heads of his expenditure; or, if he isashamed to do so, let him no more impute to the poor their poverty as acrime, nor set them to break stones in order to frighten them fromcommitting it. To lose money ill is indeed often a crime; but to get itill is a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, Lordsof England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give them, becausethey spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Render them, therefore, anaccount of the wages which _they_ give _you_; and show them, by yourexample, how to spend theirs, to the last farthing advisedly.

  It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged subject of instruction,to the workingman,--how to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we _must_give that instruction, whether we will or no, one way or the other. Wehave given it in years gone by; and now we find fault with our peasantryfor having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our tuition.Only a few days since I had a letter from the wife of a village rector,a man of common sense and kindness, who was greatly troubled in hismind because it was precisely the men who got highest wages in summerthat came destitute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotoustemper--for their method of spending wages in their period of prosperitywas by sitting two days a week in the tavern parlor, ladling port wine,not out of bowls, but out of buckets. Well, gentlemen, who taught themthat method of festivity? Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperiencedfreshman, went to my first college supper; at the head of the table sata nobleman of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of palsy;there also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, indeed, but bowls aslarge as buckets; there also, we helped ourselves with ladles. There(for this beginning of college education was compulsory), I choosingladlefuls of punch instead of claret, because I was then able,unperceived to pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat,stood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow-students,one of them the son of the head of a college, head foremost, down stairsand home.

  Such things are no more; but the fruit of them remains, and will formany a day to come. The laborers whom you cannot now shut out of theale-house are only the too faithful disciples of the gentlemen who werewont to shut themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have notthought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to diminishtheir incomes; and, believe me, the way to deal with your drunkenworkman is not to lower his wages,--but to mend his wits.[140]

  And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to deal with the sinsof our poor brother, it is possible that our dimness of sight may stillhave other causes that can be cast out. There are two opposite cries ofthe great liberal and conservative parties, which are both most right,and worthy to be rallying cries. On their side "let every man have hischance;" on yours "let every man stand in his place." Yes, indeed, letthat be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See thathe holds that place from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family'sProvidence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymenwill look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quitthemselves of nepotism, and we will take care of their authority forthem. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, in which the onesubject of daily intelligence shall be the grounds of promotion; agazette which shall simply tell us, what there certainly can be nodetriment to the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointedto a new command,--what his former services and successes havebeen,--whom he has superseded,--and on what ground. It will be always asatisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an advantage to you: and then,when there is really necessary debate respecting reduction of wages, letus always begin not with the wages of the industrious classes, but withthose of the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, if people likethem; but let there be no honorary incomes.

  So much for the master's motto, "Every man in his place." Next for thelaborer's motto, "Every man his chance." Let us mend that for them alittle, and say, "Every man his certainty"--certainty, that if he doeswell, he will be honored, and aided, and advanced in such degree as maybe fitting for his faculty and consistent with his peace; and equalcertainty that if he does ill, he will by sure justice be judged, and bysure punishment be chastised; if it may be, corrected; and if that maynot be, condemned. That is the right reading of the Republican motto,"Every man his chance." And then, with such a system of government,pure, watchful and just, you may approach your great problem of nationaleducation, or in other words, of national employment. For all educationbegins in work. What we think, or what we know; or what we believe, isin the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is whatwe _do;_ and for man, woman, or child, the first point of education isto make them do their best. It is the law of good economy to make thebest of everything. How much more to make the best of every creature!Therefore, when your pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask of himinstantly--What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can you drive anail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mendthe walls of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can you lift aspadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can youonly drag a weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hilland help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron and chisel stone?Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a harbor; and change these shiftingsands into fruitful ground. Wherever death was, bring life; that is tobe your work; that your parish refuge; that your education. So and nootherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the continual educationof the whole people, and for their future happiness, they must have suchconsistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers,and the limbs, and the brain: and that development is only to beobtained by hand-labor, of which you have these four greatdivisions--hand-labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor inart, hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speakto-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity.

  I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman and of thesheph
erd;--to dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it--the firsttask of man, and the final one--the education always of noblestlawgivers, kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, of Moses, ofDavid, of all the true strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: thepride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on theearth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing:--notsteam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forthwith steam-whistling. You will have no prophet's voice accompanied bythat shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that lately, inCumberland, in the chief pastoral district of England--in Wordsworth'sown home--a procession of villagers on their festa day provided forthemselves, by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head ofthem.

  Give me patience while I put the principle of machine labor before you,as clearly and in as short compass as possible; it is one that should beknown at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to employ ahundred men on his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men isenough, but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raisefrom it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. He isobliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the men in moderatecomfort, and can only by economy accumulate much for himself. But,suppose he contrive a machine that will easily do the work of fifty men,with only one man to watch it. This sounds like a great advance incivilization. The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off thefifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and now he cankeep half of the produce of his estate, which formerly went to feedthem, all to himself. That is the essential and constant operation ofmachinery among us at this moment.

  Nay, it is at first answered; no man can in reality keep half theproduce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end keep more thanhis own human share of anything; his riches must diffuse themselves atsome time; he must maintain somebody else with them, however he spendsthem. That is mainly true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are inordinary circumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantitieswhich would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, for instance,is candlelight--and I probably burn, for myself alone, as many candlesduring the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or spare the youngones, of a whole rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly true,that it is not by their personal waste that rich people prevent thelives of the poor. This is the way they do it. Let me go back to myfarmer. He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, screaming, andoccasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned off hisfifty men to starve. Now, at some distance from his own farm, there isanother on which the laborers were working for their bread in the sameway, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over to these, saying--"Ihave got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing any more.I can maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land;if you rake in its gravel you will find some hard stones--you shallgrind those on mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear anecklace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows below you will findsome fine white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service forme: and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for mycarriage--and you shall groom them, and some of you ride behind thecarriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter fordoing that than you can keep yourselves by digging."

  Well--but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, nor china, norpictures, nor footmen, then--but all to be farmers? I am not saying whatwe ought to do, I want only to show you with perfect clearness firstwhat we _are doing_; and that, I repeat, is the upshot ofmachine-contriving in this country. And observe its effect on thenational strength. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty yeomenready to join for defence of the land. You get your machine, starvefifty of them, make diamond-cutters or footmen of as many more, and foryour national defence against an enemy, you have now, and _can_ have,only fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty; these also now withminds much alienated from you as their chief,[141] and the rest,lapidaries or footmen; and a steam plough.

  That is one effect of machinery; but at all events, if we have thus lostin men, we have gained in riches; instead of happy human souls, we haveat least got pictures, china, horses, and are ourselves better off thanwe were before. But very often, and in much of our machine-contriving,even _that_ result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer forthe machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For observe, ourgaining in riches depends on the men who are out of employmentconsenting to be starved, or sent out of the country. But suppose theydo not consent passively to be starved, but some of them becomecriminals, and have to be taken charge of and fed at a much greater costthan if they were at work, and, others, paupers, rioters, and the like,then you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and ingenuity. Youhave your hundred men honestly at country work; but you don't like thesight of human beings in your fields; you like better to see a smokingkettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ yourfifty men in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving.

  By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are to till the ground. Byhand-labor also to plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, andin war: not with floating kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle,and the winds of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greecerose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of Amalfi in herblue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily:--so,your own dominion also of the past. Of the past mind you. On the Balticand the Nile, your power is already departed. By machinery you wouldadvance to discovery; by machinery you would carry your commerce;--youwould be engineers instead of sailors; and instantly in the North seasyou are beaten among the ice, and before the very Gods of Nile, beatenamong the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawnonly by animals; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be thechief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal academy of allacademies you have to open over all the land, purifying your heaths andhills, and waters, and keeping them full of every kind of lovely naturalorganism, in tree, herb, and living creature. All land that is waste andugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; all ruin, desolateness,imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with; andthroughout every village and city of your English dominion there mustnot be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that cannot find acomforter.

  "How impossible!" I know, you are thinking. Ah! So far from impossible,it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I declare to you that,sooner or later, it _must be done_, at our peril. If now our Englishlords of land will fix this idea steadily before them; take the peopleto their hearts, trust to their loyalty, lead their labor;--then indeedthere will be princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the islandthrone,

  "This royal throne of kings--this sceptred isle-- This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection, and the hand of war; This precious stone set in the silver sea; This happy breed of men--this little world: This other Eden--Demi-Paradise."

  But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, clutchingthrough the confused catastrophe of all things only at what they canstill keep stealthily for themselves--their doom is nearer than eventheir adversaries hope, and it will be deeper than even their despisersdream.

  That, believe me, is the work you have to do in England; and out ofEngland you have room for everything else you care to do. Are herdominions in the world so narrow that she can find no place to spincotton in but Yorkshire? We may organize emigration into an infinitepower. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious ofour youth; we may send them on truest foreign service, founding newseats of authority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated andunconquered lands; retaining the full affection to the native country noless in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintainallegiance to their fatherland in labor no less than in battle; aidingthem with free hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victoryover adverse natural powers; establishing seats of every manufacture inthe climates
and places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves intodue alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities of every race,and the wisdoms of every tradition and every tongue.

  And then you may make England itself the centre of the learning, of thearts, of the courtesies and felicities of the world. Yon may cover hermountains with pasture; her plains with corn, her valleys with the lily,and her gardens with the rose. You may bring together there in peacethe wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their word,command through its farthest darkness the birth of "God's firstcreature, which was Light." You know whose words those are; the words ofthe wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him the wisest of all other greatnations, have spoken always to men of this hope, and they would nothear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at hisdeath--Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands--Virgil,in the prophetic tenth eclogue--Bacon, in his fable of the NewAtlantis--More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, became thebye-word of fools--these, all, have told us with one voice what weshould strive to attain; _they_ not hopeless of it, but for our folliesforced, as it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables,lest we should hear them and obey.

  Shall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? Then listenat least to the words of your children--let us in the lips of babes andsucklings find our strength; and see that we do not make them mockinstead of pray, when we teach them, night and morning, to ask for whatwe believe never can be granted;--that the will of the Father,--whichis, that His creatures may be righteous and happy--should be done, _onearth_, as it is in Heaven.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [139] Compare _Time and Tide_, Sec. 169, _and Fors Clavigera_, Letter XIV,page 9.

  [140] See Appendix, "Modern Education," and compare Sec. 70 of _Time andTide_.

  [141] [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of thisyear, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.]