pace of country equal in extent to England, could a whole English
Nation, with all their habitudes, arrangements, skills, with
whatsoever they do carry within the skins of them and cannot be stript
of, suddenly take wing and alight on it,--would be worth a very
considerable thing! Swiftly, within year and day, this English Nation,
with its multiplex talents of ploughing, spinning, hammering, mining,
road-making and trafficking, would bring a handsome value out of such
a space of country. On the other hand, fancy what an English Nation,
once 'on the wing,' could have done with itself, had there been simply
no soil, not even an inarable one, to alight on? Vain all its talents
for ploughing, hammering, and whatever else; there is no Earth-room
for this Nation with its talents: this Nation will have to _keep_
hovering on the wing, dolefully shrieking to and fro; and perish
piecemeal; burying itself, down to the last soul of it, in the waste
unfirmamented seas. Ah yes, soil, with or without ploughing, is the
gift of God. The soil of all countries belongs evermore, in a very
considerable degree, to the Almighty Maker! The last stroke of labour
bestowed on it is not the making of its value, but only the
increasing thereof.

It is very strange, the degree to which these truisms are forgotten in
our days; how, in the ever-whirling chaos of Formulas, we have quietly
lost sight of Fact,--which it is so perilous not to keep forever in
sight. Fact, if we do not see it, will make us _feel_ it by and
by!--From much loud controversy, and Corn-Law debating there rises,
loud though inarticulate, once more in these years, this very question
among others, Who made the Land of England? Who made it, this
respectable English Land, wheat-growing, metalliferous, carboniferous,
which will let readily hand over head for seventy millions or upwards,
as it here lies: who did make it?--"We!" answer the much-_consuming_
Aristocracy; "We!" as they ride in, moist with the sweat of Melton
Mowbray: "It is we that made it; or are the heirs, assigns and
representatives of those who did!"--My brothers, You? Everlasting
honour to you, then; and Corn-Laws as many as you will, till your own
deep stomachs cry Enough, or some voice of Human pity for our famine
bids you Hold! Ye are as gods, that can create soil. Soil-creating
gods there is no withstanding. They have the might to sell wheat at
what price they list; and the right, to all lengths, and
famine-lengt