ould be assigned to incomes
according to classes; and that every nobleman's income should be paid
to him as a fixed salary or pension by the nation; and not squeezed by
him in variable sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land.
But if you could get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which would
be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the assigned incomes
by making a given weight of pure bread for a given sum, a twelvemonth
would not pass before another currency would have been tacitly
established, and the power of accumulative wealth would have reasserted
itself in some other article, or some other imaginary sign. There is
only one cure for public distress--and that is public education,
directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are,
indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually better and
strengthen the national temper; but, for the most part, they are such
as the national temper must be much bettered before it would bear. A
nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by
backboards, but when it is old it cannot that way straighten its
crooked spine.

And besides, the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one;
distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains
inexorable,--Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief words, is to do
the hard and dirty work for the rest--and for what pay? Who is to do
the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay? Who is to do no work,
and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious questions
connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the
soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the abstracted
psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful or ideal
soul? If we had to deal with mere blood, instead of spirit (and the
thing might literally be done--as it has been done with infants before
now)--so that it were possible by taking a certain quantity of blood
from the arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it all into one
person, to make a more azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing would
of course be managed; but secretly, I should conceive. But now,
because it is brain and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it
can be done quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest
prey, after the manner of weasels; that is to say, we keep a certain
number of clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupefied, in
order that we, being fed gratis, ma