Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
Nature's Laws, I must repeat, are eternal: her small still
voice, speaking from the inmost heart of us, shall not, under
terrible penalties, be disregarded. No one man can depart from
the truth without damage to himself; no one million of men; no
Twenty-seven Millions of men. Shew me a Nation fallen everywhere
into this course, so that each expects it, permits it to others
and himself, I will shew you a Nation traveling with one assent
on the broad way. The broad way, however many Banks of England,
Cotton-Mills and Duke's Palaces it may have! Not at happy
Elysian fields, and everlasting crowns of victory, earned by
silent Valour, will this Nation arrive; but at precipices,
devouring gulfs, if it pause not. Nature has appointed happy
fields, victorious laurel-crowns; but only to the brave and
true: _Un_nature, what we call Chaos, holds nothing in it but
vacuities, devouring gulfs. What are Twenty-seven Millions, and
their unanimity? Believe them not: the Worlds and the Ages, God
and Nature and All Men say otherwise.
'Rhetoric all this?' No, my brother, very singular to say, it is
Fact all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is not truer. Forgotten in
these days, it is old as the foundations of the Universe, and
will endure till the Universe cease. It is forgotten now; and
the first mention of it puckers thy sweet countenance into a
sneer: but it will be brought to mind again,--unless indeed the
Law of Gravitation chance to cease, and men find that they can
walk on vacancy. Unanimity of the Twenty-seven Millions will do
nothing: walk not thou with them; fly from them as for thy
life. Twenty-seven Millions traveling on such courses, with gold
jingling in every pocket, with vivats heaven-high, are
incessantly advancing, let me again remind thee, towards the
_firm-land's end,_--towards the end and extinction of what
Faithfulness, Veracity, real Worth, was in their way of life.
Their noble ancestors have fashioned for them a 'life-road!'--in
how many thousand senses, this! There is not an old wise Proverb
on their tongue, an honest Principle articulated in their hearts
into utterance, a wise true method of doing and despatching any
work or commerce of men, but helps yet to carry them forward.
Life is still possible to them, because all is not yet Puffery,
Falsity, Mammon-worship and Unnature; because somewhat is yet
Faithfulness, Veracity and Valour. With a certain very
considerable finite quantity of Unveracity and Phantasm, social
life is still possible; not with an infinite quantity! Exceed
your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat, and all things upwards
to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and flounder,--
in Manchester Insurrections, Chartisms, Sliding-scales; the Law
of Gravitation not forgetting to act. You advance incessantly
towards the land's end; you are, literally enough, 'consuming
the way.' Step after step, Twenty-seven Million unconscious
men;--till you are at the land's end; till there is not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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