"But what is to be done with our manufacturing population, with our agricultural, with our ever-increasing population?--cry many.--Ay, what? Many things can be done with them, a hundred things, a thousand things--had we once got a soul and begun to try. This one thing of doing for them by 'underselling all people,' and filling our own bursten pockets by the road; and turning over all care for any 'population,' or human or divine consideration, except cash only, to the winds, with a 'Laissez-faire' and the rest of it; this is evidently not the thing. 'Farthing cheaper per yard;' no great nation can stand on the apex of such a pyramid; screwing itself higher and higher: balancing itself on its great toe! Can England not subsist without being _above_ all people in working? England never deliberately proposed such a thing. If England work better than all people, it shall be well. England, like an honest worker, will work as well as she can; and hope the gods may allow her to live on that basis. _Laissez-faire_ and much else being once dead, how many 'impossibles' will become possible! They are 'impossible' as cotton-cloth at twopence an ell was--till men set about making it. The inventive genius of great England will not for ever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps, and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a beaver's, or a spinner's, or a spider's genius: it is a _man's_ genius, I hope, with a God over him!"--P. 246. And hear our Diogenes on the often repeated cry of _over-production_:-- "But what will reflective readers say of a governing class, such as ours, addressing its workers with an indictment of 'over-production!' Over-production: runs it not so? 'Ye miscellaneous ignoble, manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much. We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made of fustian, of cassimere, of Scotch plaid, of jane, nankeen, and woollen broadcloth, are they not manifold? Of hats for the human head, of shoes for the human foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with--Nay, what say we of hats and shoes? You produce gold watches, jewelleries, silver forks and épergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofas--Heavens, the Commercial Bazar and multitudinous Howel and James cannot contain you! You have produced, produced;--he that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of shirts and empty pairs of breeches hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of over-producing; you are criminally guilty of producing shirts, breeches, hats, shoes, and commodities in a frightful over-abundance. And now there is a glut, and your operatives cannot be fed.'