e
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
Land of the free, and the home of the blest.
We are the child of England, and we revere, we love, we emulate her. We
adopt her methods, we worship her god. We follow in her footsteps, and
emulating her example, we send out missionaries to extend the gospel of
trade; we love to buy cheap and sell dear; we love to scheme; we
delight in speculation, for that is an intellectual operation. We have
been taught for centuries that the mind is divine, the body devilish.
We do well, therefore, to despise the devilish body and exalt the
godlike soul. We do well to depress and belittle the hand, and to
glorify and enlarge the head. We do well to say it, and to make men
believe it if we can, that the "pen is mightier than the sword" or the
plough. We do well to convert our boys and girls into exaggerated
h
|