Indigent friends,we will adopt this new relation (which is old as the world);this will lead us towards such.Rigorous conditions,to be violated on either side,lie in this relation;conditions planted there by God Himself;which woe will betide us if we do discover,gradually more and more discover,and conform to!Industrial Colonels,Workmasters,Task-masters,Life-commanders,equitable as Rhadamanthus and inflexible as he:such,I perceive,you do need;and such,you being once put under law as soldiers are,will be discoverable for you.I perceive,with boundless alarm,that I shall have to set about discovering such,--I,since I am at the top of affairs,with all men looking to me.Alas,it is my new task in this New Era;and God ks,I too,little other than a red-tape Talking-machine,and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence hitherto,am far behind with it!But street-barricades rise everywhere:the hour of Fate has come.In Connemara there has sprung a leak,since the potato died;Connaught,if it were for Treasury-grants and rates-in-aid,would have to recur to Cannibalism even ,and Human Society would cease to pretend that it existed there.Done this thing must be.Alas,Iperceive that if I can do it,then surely I shall die,and perhaps shall have Christian burial!But I already raise near upon Ten Millions for feeding you in idleness,my adic friends;work,under due regulations,I really might try to get of--[Here arises indescribable uproar,longer repressible,from all manner of Ecoists,Emancipationists,Constitutionalists,and miscellaneous Professors of the Dismal Science,pretty numerously scattered about;and cries of "Private enterprise,""Rights of Capital,""Voluntary Principle,""Doctrines of the British Constitution,"swollen by the general assenting hum of all the world,quite drown the Chief Minister for a while.He,with invincible resolution,persists;obtains hearing again.]
"Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science,soft you a little.
Alas,I k what you would say.For my sins,I have read much in those inimitable volumes of yours,--really I should think,some barrowfuls of them in my time,--and,in these last forty years of theory and practice,have pretty well seized what of Divine Message you were sent with to me.Perhaps as small a message,give me leave to say,as ever there was such a se made about before.Trust me,I have forgotten it,shall never forget it.Those Laws of the Shop-till are indisputable to me;and practically useful in certain departments of the Universe,as the multiplication-table itself.Once I even tried to sail through the Immensities with them,and to front the big coming Eternities with them;but I found it would do.As the Supreme Rule of Statesmanship,or Government of Men,--since this Universe is wholly a Shop,--You rejoice in my improved tariffs,free-trade movements and the like,on every hand;for which be thankful,and even sing litanies if you choose.But here at last,in the Idle-Workhouse movement,--unexampled yet on Earth or in the waters under the Earth,--I am fairly brought to a stand;and have had to make reflections,of the most alarming,and indeed awful,and as it were religious nature!Professors of the Dismal Science,I perceive that the length of your tether is pretty well run;and that I must request you to talk a little lower in future.By the side of the shop-till,--see,your small 'Law of God'is hung up,along with the multiplication-table itself.But beyond and above the shop-till,allow me to say,you shall as good as hold your peace.Respectable Professors,Iperceive it is the Gigantic Hucksters,but it is the Immortal Gods,yes they,in their terror and their beauty,in their wrath and their beneficence,that are coming into play in the affairs of this world!Soft you a little.Do you interrupt me,but try to understand and help me!----"Work,was I saying?My indigent unguided friends,I should think some work might be discoverable for you.Enlist,stand drill;become,from a adic Banditti of Idleness,Soldiers of Industry!I will lead you to the Irish Bogs,to the vacant desolations of Connaught falling into Cannibalism,to mistilled Connaught,to ditto Munster,Leinster,Ulster,I will lead you:to the English fox-covers,furze-grown Commons,New Forests,Salisbury Plains:likewise to the Scotch Hill-sides,and bare rushy slopes,which as yet feed only sheep,--moist uplands,thousands of square miles in extent,which are destined yet to grow green crops,and fresh butter and milk and beef without limit (wherein 'Foreigner can compete with us'),were the Glasgow sewers once opened on them,and you with your Colonels carried thither.In the Three Kingdoms,or in the Forty Colonies,depend upon it,you shall be led to your work!
"To each of you I will then say:Here is work for you;strike into it with manlike,soldier-like obedience and heartiness,according to the methods here prescribed,--wages follow for you without difficulty;all manner of just remuneration,and at length emancipation itself follows.Refuse to strike into it;shirk the heavy labor,disobey the rules,--I will admonish and endeavor to incite you;if in vain,I will flog you;if still in vain,I will at last shoot you,--and make God's Earth,and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle,free of you.Understand it,Iadvise you!The Organization of Labor"--[Left speaking ,says our reporter.]
"Left speaking:"alas,that he should have to "speak"so much!
There are things that should be done,spoken;that till the doing of them is begun,can well be spoken.He may have to "speak"seven years yet,before a spade be struck into the Bog of Allen;and then perhaps it will be too late!-You perceive,my friends,we have actually got into the "New Era"there has been such prophesying of:here we all are,arrived at last;--and it is by means the land flowing with milk and honey we were led to expect!Very much the reverse.A terrible new country this:neighbors in it yet,that I can see,but irrational flabby monsters (philanthropic and other)of the giant species;hyenas,laughing hyenas,predatory wolves;probably devils ,blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow)devils,as St.
Guthlac found in Croyland long ago.A huge untrodden haggard country,the "chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;"a country of savage glaciers,granite mountains,of foul jungles,unhewed forests,quaking bogs;--which we shall have our own ados to make arable and habitable,I think!We must stick by it,however;--of all enterprises the impossiblest is that of getting out of it,and shifting into aher.To work,then,one and all;hands to work!