But the first broad sum of fact, for the sake of which I have given this diary, is that among certainly not less than some seven or eight hundred people, seen by me in the course of this day, I saw not one happy face, and several hundreds of entirely miserable ones. The second broad sum of fact is, that out of the few,—not happy,—but more or less spirited and complacent faces I saw, among the lower and the mercantile classes, what life or spirit they had depended on a peculiar cock-on-a-dunghill character of impudence, which meant a total inability to conceive any good or lovely thing in this world or any other: and the third sum of fact is, that in this rich England I saw only eight out of eight hundred persons gracefully dressed, and decently mannered. But the particular sign, and prophetic vision of the day, to me, was the man lying with his boots on his ‘Graphic.’ There is a long article in the ‘Monetary Gazette,’ sent me this morning, on the folly of the modern theory that the nation is suffering from ‘over-production.’ The writer is quite correct in his condemnation of the fallacy in question; but it has not occurred to him, nor to any other writer that I know of on such matters, to consider whether we may not possibly be suffering from over-destruction. If you use a given quantity of steam power and human ingenuity to produce your ‘Graphic’ in the morning, and travel from Warrington to Chester with your boots upon it in the afternoon,—Is the net result, production, my dear editor? The net result is labour with weariness A.M.,—idleness with disgust P.M.,—and nothing to eat next day. And do not think our Warrington friend other than a true type of your modern British employer of industry. The universal British public has no idea of any other use of art, or industry, than he! It reclines everlastingly with its boots on its ‘Graphic.’ ‘To-morrow there will be another,—what use is there in the old?’ Think of the quantity of energy used in the ‘production’ of the daily works of the British press? The first necessity of our lives in the morning,—old rags in the evening! Or the annual works of the British naval architect? The arrow of the Lord’s deliverance in January, and old iron in June! The annual industry of the European soldier,—of the European swindler,—of the European orator,—will you tell me, good Mr. Editor, what it is that they produce? Will you calculate for me, how much of all that is, they destroy? But even of what we do produce, under some colour or fancy, of service to humanity,—How much of it is of any service to humanity, good Mr. Editor? Here is a little bit of a note bearing on the matter, written last Christmas in a fit of incontrollable provocation at a Christian correspondent’s drawl of the popular sentiment, “living is so very expensive, you know!” Why, of course it is, living as you do, in a saucepan full of steam, with no potatoes in it!