what are likely to be the consequences to others
besides himself, he is defending the very worst doings that have brought
about his discontent. He might as well say that there is no better rule
needful for men than that each should tug and drive for what will please
him, without caring how that tugging will act on the fine widespread
network of society in which he is fast meshed. If any man taught that as
a doctrine, we should know him for a fool. But there are men who act
upon it; every scoundrel, for example, whether he is a rich religious
scoundrel who lies and cheats on a large scale, and will perhaps come and
ask you to send him to Parliament, or a poor pocket-picking scoundrel,
who will steal your loose pence while you are listening round the
platform. None of us are so ignorant as not to know that a society, a
nation is held together by just the opposite doctrine and action--by the
dependence of men on each other and the sense they have of a common
interest in preventing injury. And we working men are, I think, of all
classes the last that can afford to forget this; for if we did we should
be much like sailors cutting away the timbers of our own ship to warm our
grog with. For what else is the meaning of our trades-unions? What else
is the meaning of every flag we carry, every procession we make, every
crowd we collect for the sake of making some protest on behalf of our
body as receivers of wages, if not this: that it is our interest to stand
by each other, and that this being the common interest, no one of us will
try to make a good bargain for himself without considering what will be
good for his fellows? And every member of a union believes that the
wider he can spread his union, the stronger and surer will be the effect
of it. So I think I shall be borne out in saying that a working man who
can put two and two together, or take three from four and see what will
be the remainder, can understand that a society, to be well off, must be
made up chiefly of men who consider the general good as well as their
own.

Well, but taking the world as it is--and this is one way we must take it
when we want to find out how it can be improved--no society is made up of
a single class: society stands before us like that wonderful piece of
life, the human body, with all its various parts depending on one
another, and with a terrible liability to get wrong because of that
delicate dependence. We all know how many disea