t? No better;--if not
this, then something other equally disastrous, if not still more
disastrous. Mammonisms, grown asinine, have to become human again, and
rational; they have, on the whole, to cease to be Mammonisms, were it
even on compulsion, and pressure of the hemp round their neck!--My
friends of the Working Aristocracy, there are now a great many things
which you also, in your extreme need, will have to consider.

* * * * *

The Continental people, it would seem, are 'exporting our machinery,
beginning to spin cotton and manufacture for themselves, to cut us out
of this market and then out of that!' Sad news indeed; but
irremediable;--by no means the saddest news. The saddest news is, that
we should find our National Existence, as I sometimes hear it said,
depend on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper
than any other People. A most narrow stand for a great Nation to base
itself on! A stand which, with all the Corn-Law Abrogations
conceivable, I do not think will be capable of enduring.

My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we came honestly
down from it, and said: "This is our minimum of cotton-prices. We care
not, for the present, to make cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem
so blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with
cotton-fuzz, your hearts with copperas-fumes, with rage and mutiny;
become ye the general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!"--I admire
a Nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other
Nations, to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to
_under_sell them; we will be content to _equal_-sell them; to be happy
selling equally with them! I do not see the use of underselling them.
Cotton-cloth is already two-pence a yard or lower; and yet bare backs
were never more numerous among us. Let inventive men cease to spend
their existence incessantly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper;
and try to invent, a little, how cotton at its present cheapness could
be somewhat justlier divided among us. Let inventive men consider,
Whether the Secret of this Universe, and of Man's Life there, does,
after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in making money? There is
One God, just, supreme, almighty: but is Mammon the name of him?--With
a Hell which means 'Failing to make money,' I do not think there is
any Heaven possible that would suit one well; nor so much as an Earth
that can be habitable long!