From that night I was a Chartist, heart and soul--and so were a million and a half more of the best artisans in England--at least, I had no reason to be ashamed of my company. Yes; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper classes at their word; bowed down to the idol of political institutions, and pinned my hopes of salvation on "the possession of one ten-thousandth part of a talker in the national palaver." True, I desired the Charter, at first (as I do, indeed, at this moment), as a means to glorious ends--not only because it would give a chance of elevation, a free sphere of action, to lowly worth and talent; but because it was the path to reforms--social, legal, sanatory, educational--to which the veriest Tory--certainly not the great and good Lord Ashley--would not object. But soon, with me, and I am afraid with many, many more, the means became, by the frailty of poor human nature, an end, an idol in itself. I had so made up my mind that it was the only method of getting what I wanted, that I neglected, alas! but too often, to try the methods which lay already by me. "If we had but the Charter"--was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses, procrastinations. "If we had but the Charter"--I should be good, and free, and happy. Fool that I was! It was within, rather than without, that I needed reform. And so I began to look on man (and too many of us, I am afraid, are doing so) as the creature and puppet of circumstances--of the particular outward system, social or political, in which he happens to find himself. An abominable heresy, no doubt; but, somehow, it appears to me just the same as Benthamites, and economists, and high-churchmen, too, for that matter, have been preaching for the last twenty years with great applause from their respective parties. One set informs the world that it is to be regenerated by cheap bread, free trade, and that peculiar form of the "freedom of industry" which, in plain language, signifies "the despotism of capital"; and which, whatever it means, is merely some outward system, circumstance, or "dodge" _about_ man, and not _in_ him. Another party's nostrum is more churches, more schools, more clergymen--excellent things in their way--better even than cheap bread, or free trade, provided only that they are excellent--that the churches, schools, clergymen, are good ones. But the party of whom I am speaking seem to us workmen to consider the quality quite a secondary consideration, compared with the quantity. They expect the world to be regenerated, not by becoming more a Church--none would gladlier help them in bringing that about than the Chartists themselves, paradoxical as it may seem--but by being dosed somewhat more with a certain "Church system," circumstance, or "dodge." For my part, I seem to have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not more of any system, good or bad, but simply more of the Spirit of God.