The One Institution
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.
Again, are not Spinning-Dervishes an eloquent emblem, significant
of much? Hast thou noticed him, that solemn-visaged Turk, the
eyes shut; dingy wool mantle circularly hiding his figure;--
bell-shaped; like a dingy bell set spinning on the _tongue_ of
it? By centrifugal force the dingy wool mantle heaves itself;
spreads more and more, like upturned cup widening into upturned
saucer: thus spins he, to the praise of Allah and advantage of
mankind, fast and faster, till collapse ensue, and sometimes
death!--
A Government such as ours, consisting of from seven to eight
hundred Parliamentary Talkers, with their escort of Able Editors
and Public Opinion; and for head, certain Lords and Servants of
the Treasury, and Chief Secretaries and others, who find
themselves at once Chiefs and No-Chiefs, and often commanded
rather than commanding,--is doubtless a most complicate entity,
and none of the alertest for getting on with business! Clearly
enough, if the Chiefs be not self-motive and what we call men,
but mere patient lay-figures without self-motive principle, the
Government will not move anywhither; it will tumble
disastrously, and jumble, round its own axis, as for many years
past we have seen it do.--And yet a self-motive man who is not a
lay-figure, place him in the heart of what entity you may, will
make it move more or less! The absurdest in Nature he will make
a little _less_ absurd; he. The unwieldiest he will make to
move;--that is the use of his existing there. He will at least
have the manfulness to depart out of it, if not; to say: "I
cannot move in thee, and be a man; like a wretched drift-log
dressed in man's clothes and minister's clothes, doomed to a lot
baser than belongs to man, I will not continue with thee,
tumbling aimless on the Mother of Dead Dogs here:--Adieu!"
For, on the whole, it is the lot of Chiefs everywhere, this same.
No Chief in the most despotic country but was a Servant withal;
at once an absolute commanding General, and a poor Orderly-
Sergeant, ordered by the very men in the ranks,--obliged to
collect the vote of the ranks too, in some articulate or
inarticulate shape, and weigh well the same. The proper name of
all Kings is Minister, Servant. In no conceivable Government can
a lay-figure get forward! _This_ Worker, surely he above all
others has to 'spread out his Gideon's Fleece,' and collect the
monitions of Immensity; the poor Localities, as we said, and
parishes of Palace-yard or elsewhere, having no due monition in
them. A Prime Minister, even here in England, who shall dare
believe the heavenly omens, and address himself like a man and
hero to the great dumb-struggling heart of England; and speak
out for it, and act out for it, the God's-justice it is writhing
to get uttered and perishing for want of,--yes, he too will see
awaken round him, in passionate burning all-defiant loyalty, the
heart of England, and such a 'support' as no Division-List or
Parliamentary Majority was ever yet known to yield a man! Here
as there, now as then, he who can and dare trust the heavenly
Immensities, all earthly Localities are subject to him. We will
pray for such a Man and First-Lord;--yes, and far better, we will
strive and incessantly make ready, each of us, to be worthy to
serve and second such a First-Lord! We shall then be as good
as sure of his arriving; sure of many things, let him arrive
or not.
Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldiers'
Guardhouse, or meets a redcoated man on the streets! That a body
of men could be got together to kill other men when you bade
them: this, _a priori,_ does it not seem one of the impossiblest
things? Yet look, behold it: in the stolidest of Donothing
Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there,
with buff-belts, red coats on its back; walking sentry at
guardhouses, brushing white breeches in barracks; an
indisputable palpable fact. Out of grey Antiquity, amid all
finance-difficulties, _scaccarium_-tallies, ship-monies, coat-
and-conduct monies, and vicissitudes of Chance and Time, there,
down to the present blessed hour, it is.
Often, in these painfully decadent and painfully nascent Times,
with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings and
'impossibilities;' meeting a tall Lifeguardsmans in his snow-
white trousers, or seeing those two statuesque Lifeguardsmen in
their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coal-
black sleek-fiery quadrupeds, riding sentry at the Horse-
Guards,'--it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how,
in such universal down-rushing and wrecked impotence of almost
all old institutions, this oldest Fighting Institution is still
so young! Fresh-complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the
standard, this fighting-man has verily been got up, and can
fight. While so much has not yet got into being; while so much
has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty Semblance or
Clothes-suit; and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading
under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye,
unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's-
blanket,--here still is a reality!
The man in horsehair wig advances, promising that he will get me
'justice:' he takes me into Chancery Law-Courts, into decades,
half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and does get
me--disappointment, almost desperation; and one refuge: that of
dismissing him and his 'justice' altogether out of my head. For
I have work to do; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing
with other men about the exact wages of my work: I will work
cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten-years gangrene
or Chancery Lawsuit in my heart! He of the horsehair wig is a
sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the
mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing
that he will save my soul--O ye Eternities, of him in this place
be absolute silence!--But he of the red coat, I say, is a success
and no failure! He will veritably, if he get orders, draw out a
long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact and not
a shadow. Alive in this Year Forty-three, able and willing to do
his work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of
Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far.
Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to
musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch
to percussion cap; equipments, circumstances have all changed,
and again changed: but the human battle-engine, in the inside of
any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there,
six feet in standard size. There are Pay-Offices, Woolwich
Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War-Office, Captain-General;
persuasive Sergeants, with tap of drum, recruit in market-towns
and villages;--and, on the whole, I say, here is your actual
drilled fightingman; here are your actual Ninety-thousand of
such, ready to go into any quarter of the world and fight!
Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was
this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the
one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection; this
of, successfully killing one another? Truly you have learned it
well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is
incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, you
can make of men. These thousand straight-standing firm-set
individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance,
retreat; and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery
death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity: few
months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they?
Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers,
thievish valets; an entirely broken population, fast tending
towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap
of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to
drilling them;--and he and you have made them this! Most potent,
effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm
combining and commanding among men. Let no man despair of
Governments who looks on these two sentries at the Horse-Guards,
and our United-Service Clubs! I could conceive an Emigration
Service, a Teaching Service, considerable varieties of United and
Separate Services, of the due thousands strong, all effective as
this Fighting Service is; all doing _their_ work, like it;--
which work, much more than fighting, is henceforth the necessity
of these New Ages we are got into! Much lies among us,
convulsively, nigh desperately _struggling to be born._
But mean Governments, as mean-limited individuals do, have stood
by the physically indispensable; have realised that and nothing
more. The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to
realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not
have existed: accordingly he is here. O Heavens, if we saw an
army ninety-thousand strong, maintained and fully equipt, in
continual real action and battle against Human Starvation,
against Chaos, Necessity, Stupidity, and our real 'natural
enemies,' what a business were it! Fighting and molesting not
'the French,' who, poor men, have a hard enough battle of their
own in the like kind, and need no additional molesting from us;
but fighting and incessantly spearing down and destroying
Falsehood, Nescience, Delusion, Disorder, and the Devil and his
Angels! Thou thyself, cultivated reader, hast done something in
that alone true warfare; but, alas, under what circumstances was
it? Thee no beneficent drill-sergeant, with any effectiveness,
would rank in line beside thy fellows; train, like a true
didactic artist, by the wit of all past expedience, to do thy
soldiering; encourage thee when right, punish thee when wrong,
and everywhere with wise word-of-command say, Forward on this
hand, Forward on that! Ah, no: thou hadst to learn thy small-
sword and platoon exercise where and how thou couldst; to all
mortals but thyself it was indifferent whether thou shouldst ever
learn it. And the rations, and shilling a day, were they
provided thee,--reduced as I have known brave Jean-Pauls,
learning their exercise, to live on 'water _without_ the bread?'
The rations; or any furtherance of promotion to corporalship,
lance-corporalship, or due cato'-nine tails, with the slightest
reference to thy deserts, were not provided. Forethought, even
as of a pipe-clayed drill-sergeant, did not preside over thee.
To corporalship, lance-corporalship, thou didst attain; alas,
also to the halberts and cat: but thy rewarder and punisher
seemed blind as the Deluge: neither lancecorporalship, nor
even drummer's cat, because both appeared delirious, brought
thee due profit.
It was well, all this, we know;--and yet it was not well! Forty
soldiers, I am told, will disperse the largest Spitalfields mob:
forty to ten-thousand, that is the proportion between drilled and
undrilled. Much there is which cannot yet be organised in this
world; but somewhat also which can, somewhat also which must.
When one thinks, for example, what Books are becoming for us,
what Operative Lancashires are become; what a Fourth Estate, and
innumerable Virtualities not yet got to be Actualities are become
and becoming,--one sees Organisms enough in the dim huge Future;
and 'United Services' quite other than the redcoat one; and
much, even in these years, struggling to be born!
Of Time-Bill, Factory-Bill and other such Bills the present
Editor has no authority to speak. He knows not, it is for others
than he to know, in what specific ways it may be feasible to
interfere, with Legislation, between the Workers and the Master-
Workers;--knows only and sees, what all men are beginning to see,
that Legislative interference, and interferences not a few are
indispensable; that as a lawless anarchy of supply-and-demand,
on market-wages alone, this province of things cannot longer be
left. Nay interference has begun: there are already Factory
Inspectors,--who seem to have no _lack_ of work. Perhaps there
might be Mine-Inspectors too:--might there not be Furrowfield
Inspectors withal, and ascertain for us how on seven and sixpence
a week a human family does live! Interference has begun; it
must continue, must extensively enlarge itself, deepen and
sharpen itself. Such things cannot longer be idly lapped in
darkness, and suffered to go on unseen: the Heavens do see them;
the curse, not the blessing of the Heavens is on an Earth that
refuses to see them.
Again, are not Sanitary Regulations possible for a Legislature?
The old Romans had their Aediles; who would, I think, in direct
contravention to supply-and-demand, have rigorously seen rammed
up into total abolition many a foul cellar in our Southwarks,
Saint-Gileses, and dark poison-lanes; saying sternly, "Shall a
Roman man dwell there?" The Legislature, at whatever cost of
consequences, would have had to answer, "God forbid!"--The
Legislature, even as it now is, could order all dingy
Manufacturing Towns to cease from their soot and darkness; to
let in the blessed sunlight, the blue of Heaven, and become clear
and clean; to burn their coal-smoke, namely, and make flame of
it. Baths, free air, a wholesome temperature, ceilings twenty
feet high, might be ordained by Act of Parliament, in all
establishments licensed as Mills. There are such Mills already
extant;--honour to the builders of them! The Legislature can say
to others: Go ye and do likewise; better if you can.
Every toiling Manchester, its smoke and soot all burnt, ought it
not, among so many world-wide conquests, to have a hundred acres
or so of free greenfield, with trees on it, conquered, for its
little children to disport in; for its all-conquering workers to
take a breath of twilight air in? You would say so! A willing
Legislature could say so with effect. A willing Legislature
could say very many things! And to whatsoever 'vested interest,'
or such like, stood up, gainsaying merely, "I shall lose
profits,"--the willing Legislature would answer, "Yes, but my
sons and daughters will gain health, and life, and a soul."--
"What is to become of our Cotton-trade?" cried certain Spinners,
when the Factory-Bill was proposed; "What is to become of our
invaluable Cotton-trade?" The Humanity of England answered
steadfastly: "Deliver me these rickety perishing souls of
infants, and let your Cotton-trade take its chance. God Himself
commands the one thing; not God especially the other thing. We
cannot have prosperous Cotton-trades at the expense of keeping
the Devil a partner in them!"--
Bills enough, were the Corn-Law Abrogation Bill once passed, and
a Legislature willing! Nay this one Bill, which lies yet
unenacted, a right Education Bill, is not this of itself the sure
parent of innumerable wise Bills,--wise regulations, practical
methods and proposals, gradually ripening towards the state of
Bills? To irradiate with intelligence, that is to say, with
order, arrangement and all blessedness, the Chaotic,
Unintelligent: how, except by educating, _can_ you-accomplish
this? That thought, reflection, articulate utterance and
understanding be awakened in these individual million heads,
which are the atoms of your Chaos: there is no other way of
illuminating any Chaos! The sum-total of intelligence that is
found in it, determines the extent of order that is possible for
your Chaos,--the feasibility and rationality of what your Chaos
will dimly demand from you, and will gladly obey when proposed by
you! It is an exact equation; the one accurately measures the
other.--If the whole English People, during these 'twenty years
of respite,' be not educated, with at least schoolmaster's
educating, a tremendous responsibility, before God and men, will
rest somewhere! How dare any man, especially a man calling
himself minister of God, stand up in any Parliament or place,
under any pretext or delusion, and for a day or an hour forbid
God's Light to come into the world, and bid the Devil's Darkness
continue in it one hour more! For all light and science, under
all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God; all
darkness, nescience, is of the Enemy of God. 'The schoolmaster's
creed is somewhat awry?' Yes, I have found few creeds entirely
correct; few light-beams shining white, pure of admixture: but
of all creeds and religions now or ever before known, was not
that of thoughtless thriftless Animalism, of Distilled Gin, and
Stupor and Despair, unspeakably the least orthodox? We will
exchange it even with Paganism, with Fetishism; and, on the
whole, must exchange it with something.
An effective 'Teaching Service' I do consider that there must be;
some Education Secretary, Captain-General of Teachers, who will
actually contrive to get us _taught._ Then again, why should
there not be an 'Emigration Service,' and Secretary, with
adjuncts, with funds, forces, idle Navy-ships, and ever-
increasing apparatus; in fine an _effective system_ of
Emigration; so that, at length, before our twenty years of
respite ended, every honest willing Workman who found England too
strait, and the 'Organisation of Labour' not yet sufficiently
advanced, might find likewise a bridge built to carry him into
new Western Lands, there to 'organise' with more elbow-room some
labour for himself? There to be a real blessing, raising new
corn for us, purchasing new webs and hatchets from us; leaving
us at least in peace;--instead of staying here to be a Physical-
Force Chartist, unblessed and no blessing! Is it not scandalous
to consider that a Prime Minister could raise within the year, as
I have seen it done, a Hundred and Twenty Millions Sterling to
shoot the French; and we are stopt short for want of the
hundredth part of that to keep the English living? The bodies of
the English living; and the souls of the English living:--these
two 'Services,' an Education Service and an Emigration Service,
these with others will actually have to be organised!
A free bridge for Emigrants: why, we should then be on a par
with America itself, the most favoured of all lands that have no
government; and we should have, besides, so many traditions and
mementos of priceless things which America has cast away. We
could proceed deliberately to 'organise Labour,' not doomed to
perish unless we effected it within year and day;--every willing
Worker that proved superfluous, finding a bridge ready for him.
This verily will have to be done; the Time is big with this.
Our little Isle is grown too narrow for us; but the world is
wide enough yet for another Six Thousand Years. England's sure
markets will be among new Colonies of Englishmen in all quarters
of the Globe. All men trade with all men, when mutually
convenient; and are even bound to do it by the Maker of men.
Our friends of China, who guiltily refused to trade, in these
circumstances,--had we not to argue with them, in cannon-shot at
last, and convince them that they ought to trade! 'Hostile
Tariffs' will arise, to shut us out; and then again will fall,
to let us in: but the Sons of England, speakers of the English
language were it nothing more, will in all times have the
ineradicable predisposition to trade with England. Mycale was
the _Pan-Ionian,_ rendezvous of all the Tribes of Ion, for old
Greece: why should not London long continue the _All-Saxon-
home,_ rendezvous of all the 'Children of the Harz-Rock,'
arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes and elsewhere, by
steam and otherwise, to the 'season' here!--What a Future; wide
as the world, if we have the heart and heroism for it,--which, by
Heaven's blessing, we shall:
'Keep not standing fixed and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In what land the sun does visit,
Brisk are we, whate'er betide:
To give space for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide?' *
--------
* Goethe, _Wilhelm Meister_
--------
Fourteen hundred years ago, it was by a considerable 'Emigration
Service,' never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion and
apparatus, that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable Island,--
and got into our present difficulties among others!
It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, is
of slow temper; essentially conservative. In our wildest periods
of reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice always the
invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to admit the
minimum of New; to expand, if it be possible, some old habit or
method, already found fruitful, into new growth for the new need.
It is an instinct worthy of all honour; akin to all strength and
all wisdom. The Future hereby is not dissevered from the Past,
but based continuously on it; grows with all the vitalities of
the Past, and is rooted down deep into the beginnings of us. The
English Legislature is entirely repugnant to believe in 'new
epochs.' The English Legislature does not occupy itself with
epochs; has, indeed, other business to do than looking at the
Time-Horologe and hearing it tick! Nevertheless new epochs do
actually come; and with them new imperious peremptory
necessities; so that even an English Legislature has to look up,
and admit, though with reluctance, that the hour has struck. The
hour having struck, let us not say 'impossible:'--it will have to
be possible! 'Contrary to the habits of Parliament, the habits
of Government?' Yes: but did any Parliament or Government ever
sit in a Year Forty-three before? One of the most original,
unexampled years and epochs; in several important respects,
totally unlike any other! For Time, all-edacious and all-
feracious, does run on: and the Seven Sleepers, awakening hungry
after a hundred years, find that it is not their old nurses who
can now give them suck!
For the rest, let not any Parliament, Aristocracy, Millocracy, or
Member of the Governing Class, condemn with much triumph this
small specimen of 'remedial measures;' or ask again, with the
least anger, of this Editor, What is to be done, How that
alarming problem of the Working Classes is to be managed?
Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. A certain
Editor thanks the gods that nobody pays him three hundred
thousand pounds a year, two hundred thousand, twenty thousand, or
any similar sum of cash for saying How;--that his wages are very
different, his work somewhat fitter for him. An Editor's
stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. The
'way to do it,' is to try it, knowing that thou shalt die if it
be not done. There is the bare back, there is the web of cloth;
thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade
it is. 'Impossible?' Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate
there, half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with
her gibbet-cords, her steel-whips, and very authentic Tailor's
Hell; waiting to see whether it is 'possible?' Out with thy
scissors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe!