Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
But the Life-fountain within you once again set flowing,
what innumerable 'things,' whole sets and classes and continents
of 'things,' year after year, and decade after decade, and
century after century, will then be doable and done! Not
Emigration, Education, Corn-Law Abrogation, Sanitary Regulation,
Land Property-Tax; not these alone, nor a thousand times as much
as these. Good Heavens, there will then be light in the inner
heart of here and there a man, to discern what is just, what is
commanded by the Most High God, what _must_ be done, were it
never so 'impossible.' Vain jargon in favour of the palpably
unjust will then abridge itself within limits. Vain jargon, on
Hustings, in Parliaments or wherever else, when here and there a
man has vision for the essential God's-Truth of the things
jargoned of, will become very vain indeed. The silence of here
and there such a man, how eloquent in answer to such jargon!
Such jargon, frightened at its own gaunt echo, will unspeakably
abate; nay, for a while, may almost in a manner disappear,--the
wise answering it in silence, and even the simple taking cue from
them to hoot it down wherever heard. It will be a blessed time;
and many 'things' will become doable,--and when the brains are
out, an absurdity will die! Not easily again shall a Corn-Law
argue ten years for itself; and still talk and argue, when
impartial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so long back,
they have heard no 'argument' advanced for it but such as might
make the angels and almost the very jackasses weep!--
Wholly a blessed time: when jargon might abate, and here and
there some genuine speech begin. When to the noble opened heart,
as to such heart they alone do, all noble things began to grow
visible; and the difference between just and unjust, between
true and false, between work and sham-work, between speech and
jargon, was once more, what to our happier Fathers it used to be,
_infinite,_--as between a Heavenly thing and an Infernal: the
one a thing which you were _not_ to do, which you were wise not
to attempt doing; which it were better for you to have a
millstone tied round your neck, and be cast into the sea, than
concern yourself with doing!--Brothers, it will not be a
Morrison's Pill, or remedial measure, that will bring all this
about for us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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