I have mentioned the word _revolution_--social revolution. What is it? Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and machinery is doing _something_. It is quite clear that every machine does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek other means of support--they and their wives and their little ones.
It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right. I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work somewhere. But if man's "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie down and make his bed in your _pockets_, and feed on the contents in the shape of taxes--what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or he will deplete _you_. How to deplete him is a most interesting question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no continence among them--none anywhere except in wicked France.
In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?
"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"
What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and free trade--perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale--do not interrupt--I have the word--by and by you.
At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their wits' ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills. Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to _strike_, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable winter upon the _rates_. All right! England has "developed her resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory be to our god," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth before.