ng is required for getting
in the rents; and the Duke merely rides in the state-coach. It is
everywhere so: and now at last we see a world all rushing towards
strange consummations, because it is and has long been so!

I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in England at
all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and the Revolutionary
Millenniums preached by the French Prophets in this age: but there are
many movements here too which tend inevitably in the like direction; and
good men, who would stand aghast at Red Republic and its adjuncts, seem
to me travelling at full speed towards that or a similar goal! Certainly
the notion everywhere prevails among us too, and preaches itself abroad
in every dialect, uncontradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, That
the grand panacea for social woes is what we call "enfranchisement,"
"emancipation;" or, translated into practical language, the cutting
asunder of human relations, wherever they are found grievous, as is like
to be pretty universally the case at the rate we have been going for
some generations past. Let us all be "free" of one another; we
shall then be happy. Free, without bond or connection except that of
cash-payment; fair day's wages for the fair day's work; bargained for by
voluntary contract, and law of supply-and-demand: this is thought to be
the true solution of all difficulties and injustices that have occurred
between man and man.

To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method,
then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable,
obsolete, perhaps unjust; it imperatively requires to be amended; and
the remedy is, Abolish it, let there henceforth be no relation at all.
From the "Sacrament of Marriage" downwards, human beings used to be
manifoldly related, one to another, and each to all; and there was no
relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances
and difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But
henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that, by favor of Heaven:
"the voluntary principle" has come up, which will itself do the business
for us; and now let a new Sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call
emancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of
the day!--Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it
certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation which has anywhere
grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduc