while they will sit
quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans,
would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to
them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful
pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain
words:--"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home,
who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,--Shall not
all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against
him, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to
him that _ladeth himself with thick clay_'?" (What a glorious history in
one metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune!) "Woe to him that
coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to
him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by
iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall
labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very
vanity?"

The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on
their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth
a town with blood."]

113. Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national
prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil into
social and communicative systems; and that one of the first means of our
doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every important trade in
a vital, not formal, condition;--that there will be a great council or
government house for the members of every trade, built in whatever town
of the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor
council-halls in other cities; and to each council-hall, officers
attached, whose first business may be to examine into the circumstances
of every operative, in that trade, who chooses to report himself to them
when out of work, and to set him to work, if he is indeed able and
willing, at a fixed rate of wages, determined at regular periods in the
council-meetings; and whose next duty may be to bring reports before the
council of all improvements made in the business, and means of its
extension: not allowing private patents of any kind, but making all
improvements available to every member of the guild, only allotting,
after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inventors.

114. For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be again,
I trust