and then carried out and thrown on the dunghill; you
would put an end to that form of idolatry with your best diligence, I
suppose. You would understand then that the beer, and brandy, and meat,
were wasted; and that the burden imposed by each household on itself lay
heavily through them on the whole community? But, suppose further, that
this idol were not of silent and quiet bronze only, but an ingenious
mechanism, wound up every morning, to run itself down into automatic
blasphemies; that it struck and tore with its hands the people who set
food before it; that it was anointed with poisonous unguents, and
infected the air for miles round. You would interfere with the idolatry
then, straightway? Will you not interfere with it now, when the
infection that they venomous idol spreads is not merely death, but sin?

134. So far the old lecture. Returning to cool English, the end of the
matter is, that, sooner or later, we shall have to register our people;
and to know how they live; and to make sure, if they are capable of work,
that right work is given them to do.

The different classes of work for which bodies of men could be
consistently organized, might ultimately become numerous; these following
divisions of occupation may all at once be suggested:

I. Road-making.--Good roads to be made, wherever needed, and kept in
repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads, in spoiled horses,
strained wheels, and time, done away with.

II. Bringing in of waste land.--All waste lands not necessary for
public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed; chiefly our
wide and waste seashores. Not our mountains nor moorland. Our life
depends on them, more than on the best arable we have.

III. Harbor-making.--The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage
in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous
points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection
with the pilot and life-boat services. There is room for every order of
intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers.

IV. Porterage.--All heavy goods, not requiring speed in transit, to
be carried (under preventative duty on transit, by railroad) by
canal-boats, employing men for draught; and the merchant-shipping service
extended by sea; so that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while
there are idle ones in mischief on shore.

V. Repair of buildings.--A body