ic Banditti of Idleness, Soldiers of Industry! I will lead you to
the Irish Bogs, to the vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into
Cannibalism, to mistilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster,
I will lead you: to the English fox-covers, furze-grown Commons, New
Forests, Salisbury Plains: likewise to the Scotch Hill-sides, and bare
rushy slopes, which as yet feed only sheep,--moist uplands, thousands of
square miles in extent, which are destined yet to grow green crops, and
fresh butter and milk and beef without limit (wherein no 'Foreigner can
compete with us'), were the Glasgow sewers once opened on them, and you
with your Colonels carried thither. In the Three Kingdoms, or in the
Forty Colonies, depend upon it, you shall be led to your work!
"To each of you I will then say: Here is work for you; strike into it
with manlike, soldier-like obedience and heartiness, according to the
methods here prescribed,--wages follow for you without difficulty; all
manner of just remuneration, and at length emancipation itself follows.
Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labor, disobey the rules,--I
will admonish and endeavor to incite you; if in vain, I will flog you;
if still in vain, I will at last shoot you,--and make God's Earth, and
the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you. Understand it, I advise
you! The Organization of Labor"--[_Left speaking_, says our reporter.]
"Left speaking:" alas, that he should have to "speak" so much! There are
things that should be done, not spoken; that till the doing of them is
begun, cannot well be spoken. He may have to "speak" seven years yet,
before a spade be struck into the Bog of Allen; and then perhaps it will
be too late!--
You perceive, my friends, we have actually got into the "New Era" there
has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived at last;--and
it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey we were led
to expect! Very much the reverse. A terrible _new_ country this: no
neighbors in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby monsters
(philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyenas, laughing hyenas,
predatory wolves; probably _devils_, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow)
devils, as St. Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge untrodden
haggard country, the "chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;" a country
of savage glaciers, granite mountains, of foul jungles, unhewed forests,
quaking bogs;--which we shall have our own
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