Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
What our Government can do in this grand Problem of the Working
Classes of England? Yes, supposing the insane Corn-Laws totally
abolished, all speech of them ended, and 'from ten to twenty
years of new possibility to live and find wages' conceded us in
consequence: What the English Government might be expected to
accomplish or attempt towards rendering the existence of our
Labouring Millions somewhat less anomalous, somewhat less
impossible, in the years that are to follow those 'ten or
twenty,' if either 'ten' or 'twenty' there be?
It is the most momentous question. For all this of the Corn-Law
Abrogation, and what can follow therefrom, is but as the shadow
on King Hezekiah's Dial: the shadow has gone back twenty years;
but will again, in spite of Free-Trades and Abrogations, travel
forward its old fated way. With our present system of individual
Mammonism, and Government by Laissez-faire, this Nation cannot
live. And if, in the priceless interim, some new life and
healing be not found, there is no second respite to be counted
on. The shadow on the Dial advances thenceforth without pausing.
What Government can do? This that they call 'Organising of
Labour' is, if well understood, the Problem of the whole Future,
for all who will in future pretend to govern men. But our first
preliminary stage of it, How to deal with the Actual Labouring
Millions of England? this is the imperatively pressing Problem of
the Present, pressing with a truly fearful intensity and
imminence in these very years and days. No Government can longer
neglect it: once more, what can our Government do in it?
Governments are of various degrees of activity: some, altogether
Lazy Governments, in 'free countries' as they are called, seem in
these times almost to profess to do, if not nothing, one knows
not at first what. To debate in Parliament, and gain majorities;
and ascertain who shall be, with a toil hardly second to Ixion's,
the Prime Speaker and Spoke-holder, and keep the Ixion's-Wheel
going, if not forward, yet round? Not altogether so:--much, to
the experienced eye, is not what it seems! Chancery and certain
other Law-Courts seem nothing; yet in fact they are, the worst
of them, something: chimneys for the devilry and contention of
men to escape by;--a very considerable something!--Parliament too
has its tasks, if thou wilt look; fit to wear out the lives of
toughest men. The celebrated Kilkenny Cats, through their
tumultuous congress, cleaving the ear of Night, could they be
said to do nothing? Hadst thou been of them, thou hadst seen!
The feline heart laboured, as with steam up-to the bursting
point; and death-doing energy nerved every muscle: they had a
work there; and did it! On the morrow, two tails were found
left, and peaceable annihilation; a neighbourhood _delivered_
from despair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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