'-wisp lights, and no
dayspring from on high: for this also we will honour the poor
Manchester Insurrection, and augur well of it. A deep unspoken sense
lies in these strong men,--inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they
can articulate of it is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right
noble instinct of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes
them: the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom _Fact_ patronises;
of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good augury!
This work too is to be done: Governors and Governing Classes that
_can_ articulate and utter, in any measure, what the law of Fact and
Justice is, may calculate that here is a Governed Class who will
listen.

And truly this first practical form of the Sphinx-question,
inarticulately and so audibly put there, is one of the most
impressive ever asked in the world. "Behold us here, so many
thousands, millions, and increasing at the rate of fifty every hour.
We are right willing and able to work; and on the Planet Earth is
plenty of work and wages for a million times as many. We ask, If you
mean to lead us towards work; to try to lead us,--by ways new, never
yet heard of till this new unheard-of Time? Or if you declare that you
cannot lead us? And expect that we are to remain quietly unled, and in
a composed manner perish of starvation? What is it you expect of us?
What is it you mean to do with us?" This question, I say, has been put
in the hearing of all Britain; and will be again put, and ever again,
till some answer be given it.

Unhappy Workers, unhappier Idlers, unhappy men and women of this
actual England. We are yet very far from an answer, and there will be
no existence for us without finding one. "A fair day's-wages for a
fair day's-work:" it is as just a demand as Governed men ever made of
Governing. It is the everlasting right of man. Indisputable as
Gospels, as arithmetical multiplication-tables: it must and will have
itself fulfilled;--and yet, in these times of ours, with what enormous
difficulty, next-door to impossibility! For the times are really
strange; of a complexity intricate with all the new width of the
ever-widening world; times here of half-frantic velocity of impetus,
there of the deadest-looking stillness and paralysis; times definable
as showing two qualities, Dilettantism and Mammonism;--most intricate
obstructed times! Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of
Justice, prophetic, clearly o