I was told also--the newspapers said it, and it must be true--that Mr. Mundella, an enterprising M.P., and a devout worshipper of the new god, who is a vast producer at Nottingham of stockings and hosiery of every sort--had found it best--well, absolutely necessary--in order to compete with the new disciples in Germany, to remove a part of his machines and machinery to Germany, and make his stockings there, in order that those ridiculous and cheap Germans should not quite put a stop to his trade. It was whispered about that French-made tools were being bought and brought into England for use there, and it was said openly that American saws, vises, and axes were playing the very deuce; and now, just after the triumphs of the "Centennial," Englishmen are writing home that Yankee silks will also play another very deuce with them if they don't get more and cheaper labor. I see too, by late letters from England, that they propose to cheapen iron by putting cheap Chinese labor into the iron works! And yet in Germany they cry out that _they_ have a panic, and that trade is dull, and people will persist in failing, and that other people won't buy all they can make; they too are at their wits' ends. There must be something wrong, the "doctrinaires" say, about the gases. Trade is not free enough, or labor is not cheap enough, or they have too much or too little paper money, or they don't try woman suffrage. At any rate the new gospel is right--_must be right_, because if you obey the laws of trade and buy cheap and sell dear, you are sure to be happy. And France--it is frightful to think of France. Steeped in stupidity and enveloped in Cimmerean fog, she resists the new gospel. She will not send her missionaries abroad over the world; she will not build great factories and temples; she will not take her whole people from their small farms, where they raise great surpluses of food, to put them into the new temples; she does not even work her land with steam, nor does she hanker for the cheap (and nasty) things which England and Germany are so ready, willing, and anxious to pour into every household; indeed, will not have them at all. Oh, the economic condition of France makes the heart of the enlightened priest of the new gospel weep. France has taken no steps to introduce the cheap labor of Ireland or China, or even of Africa--right at her doors--into her own wretched country, and there is no sign that she will. What feeling but contempt can the sincere doctrinaire entertain for France? It would be indeed strange--and yet it is not wholly impossible--that England and Germany and the United States, all of whom have for centuries been cursing work, and crying out against work, and doing all manner of things to get rid of work, and educating their best and wisest not to do it--it would be indeed strange if some day they should be crying out, "Give us work, in God's name." Strange, but not wholly impossible. We come back now to our own country--to the