ough it did, the
work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless both he
and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the laws
which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which
regulate _all_ industries, and in better obedience to which we shall
actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our
own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal
necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it to
be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long remain
undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming more
violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes,
arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to their incomes,
and partly from their folly in imagining that they can subsist in
idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons and daughters of
English families to acquaint themselves with the principles of
providential economy; and to learn that food can only be got out of the
ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and that although it
is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest arts, nor for any,
guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of pleasures, the most
perfect mental culture possible to men is founded on their useful
energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness are consistent,
and consistent only, with their virtue.

28. This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among
us, and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate
of England depends upon the position they then take, and on their
courage in maintaining it.

There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive. Within the last few years we
have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which
has been blinding