Eventually, as we know,
perfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at
the September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that
if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism,
the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest
enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would
none the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the
revolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage
vengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties.

The nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. It had
its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians (still extant):
it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Butler, Henry George,
and Morris. And the end of all their efforts is the Chicago described
by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the London in which the people who pay to be
amused by my dramatic representation of Peter Shirley turned out to
starve at forty because there are younger slaves to be had for his
wages, do not take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any
effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that
everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and pamphleteered like
any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are no use, and
would be no use if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens,
Carlyle, Ruskin, George, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with
Euripides, More, Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe,
Ibsen, Tolstoy, Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some
sort I actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The
problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and
artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the
sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept
every plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making
a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at
which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like
Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its
ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of
rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties;
nothing but the rest and safety of having no further to fall.

Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality
suddenly begins to germinate