213

VIII. Unworking Aristocracy 218

IX. Working Aristocracy 228

X. Plugson of Undershot 235

XI. Labour 244

XII. Reward 250

XIII. Democracy 260

XIV. Sir Jabesh Windbag 275

XV. Morrison again 280

BOOK IV.

HOROSCOPE.

I. Aristocracies 297

II. Bribery Committee 312

III. The One Institution 318

IV. Captains of Industry 333

V. Permanence 341

VI. The Landed 348

VII. The Gifted 355

VIII. The Didactic 361

Summary and Index 371, 383

BOOK I.

PROEM

CHAPTER I.

MIDAS.

The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are now in the
course of publication, and many thoughts unpublished are going on in
every reflective head, is justly regarded as one of the most ominous,
and withal one of the strangest, ever seen in this world. England is
full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in
every kind; yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty
the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests;
thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen
millions of workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest
and the willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work
they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant,
exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as of
Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers, ye
master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it, no man of
you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit!" On the poor
workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest shape; but on the rich
master-workers too it falls; neither can the rich master-idlers, nor
any richest or highest man escape, but all are like to be brought low
with it, and made 'poor' enough, in the money sense or a far fataler
one.

Of these successful skilful workers some two millions it is now
counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door
relief' flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille being
filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder by a
stronger.[1] They sit there, these many months now; their hope of
deliverance as yet small.