practical meaning is that the lords of the soil take the food and labor of the peasants, who are their slaves, and spend them especially in forms of luxury perfected by the definitely so-called "women of the _town_" who, whether East-cheap Doll, or West--much the reverse of cheap--Nell, are, both in the color which they give to the Arts, and in the tone which they give to the Manners, of the State, a literal plague, pestilence and burden to it, quite otherwise malignant and maleficent than the poor country lassie who loses her snood among the heather. And when, at last, _real_ political economy shall exhibit the exact sources and consequences of the expenditure of the great capitals of civilization on their own indulgences, your Lordship will be furnished, in the statistics of their most splendid and most impious pleasure, with record of precisely the largest existing source of "remunerative employment"--(if _that_ were all the poor had to ask for), next after the preparation and practice of war. I believe it is, indeed, probable that "facility of intercourse" gives the next largest quantity of occupation; and, as your Lordship rightly observes, to most respectable persons. And if the entire population of Manchester lost the use of its legs, your Lordship would similarly have the satisfaction of observing, and might share in the profits of providing, the needful machinery of porterage and stretchers. But observe, my Lord--and observe as a final and inevitable truth--that whether you lend your money to provide an invalided population with crutches, stretchers, hearses, or the railroad accommodation which is so often synonymous with the three, the _tax on the use_ of these, which constitutes the shareholder's dividend, is a permanent burden upon them, exacted by avarice, and by no means an aid granted by benevolence. 165. (L) "Sanctioned by experience." The experience of twenty-three years, my Lord, and with the following result:-- "We have now had an opportunity of practically testing the theory. Not more than seventeen" (now twenty-three--I quote from a letter dated 1875) "years have passed since" (by the final abolition of the Usury laws) "all restraint was removed from the growth of what Lord Coke calls 'this pestilent weed,'" and we see Bacon's words verified--"the rich becoming richer, and the poor poorer, throughout the civilized world." Letter from Mr. R. Sillar, quoted in _Fors Clavigera_, No. 43. (M) "Inevitable." Neither "impossible" nor "inevitable" were words of old Christian Faith. But see the closing paragraph of my letter. (N) Before you call on me to substantiate this charge, my Lord, I should like to insert after the words, "steadily preaching," the phrase, "and politely explaining"--with the Pauline qualification, "whether by word, or our epistle."