as it until the new condition of things had passed
through a considerable advance that its political tendency began to be
plainly discerned. It was relieving the labourer from the burden of his
toil, supplanting manual by mechanical action. [Sidenote: Life in the
mill.] In the cotton-mill, which may be looked upon as the embodiment of
the new system and its tendencies, the steam-engine down below was doing
the drudgery, turning the wheels and executing the labour, while the
operatives above--men, women, and children--were engaged in those things
which the engine could not accomplish--things requiring observation and
intelligent action. Under such a state it was not possible but that a
social change should ensue, for relief from corporeal labour is always
followed by a disposition for mental activity; and it was not without a
certain degree of plausibility that the philanthropist, whose attention
was directed to this subject, asserted that the lot of the labouring man
was no better than it had been before: he had changed the tyrant, but
had not got rid of the tyranny; for the demands of the insatiate,
inexorable, untiring steam-engine must be without delay satisfied; the
broken thread must be instantly pieced; the iron fingers must receive
their new supply; the finished work must be forthwith taken away.

[Sidenote: Intellectual activity.] What was thus going on in the mill
was a miniature picture of what was going on in the state. Labour was
comparatively diminishing, mental activity increasing. Throughout the
last century the intellectual advance is most significantly marked, and
surprising is the contrast between the beginning and the close. Ideas
that once had a living force altogether died away, the whole community
offering an exemplification of the fact that the more opportunity men
have for reflection the more they will think. Well, then, might those
whose interests lay in the perpetuation of former ideas and the ancient
order of things look with intolerable apprehension on what was taking
place. They saw plainly that this intellectual activity would at last
find a political expression, and that a power, daily increasing in
intensity, would not fail to make itself felt in the end.

[Sidenote: Difference between past and present ages.] In such things are
manifested the essential differences between the Age of Faith and the
Age of Reason. In the former, if life was enjoyed in calmness it was
enjoyed in stagnation, i