on more things and human faces in this God's-Earth; do more things and
human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so. Human faces gloom
discordantly, disloyally on one another. Things, if it be not mere
cotton and iron things, are growing disobedient to man. The Master
Worker is enchanted, for the present, like his Workhouse Workman,
clamours, in vain hitherto, for a very simple sort of 'Liberty:' the
liberty 'to buy where he finds it cheapest, to sell where he finds it
dearest.' With guineas jingling in every pocket, he was no whit
richer; but now, the very guineas threatening to vanish, he feels that
he is poor indeed. Poor Master Worker! And the Master Unworker, is not
he in a still fataler situation? Pausing amid his game-preserves, with
awful eye,--as he well may! Coercing fifty-pound tenants; coercing,
bribing, cajoling; 'doing what he likes with his own.' His mouth full
of loud futilities, and arguments to prove the excellence of his
Corn-law; and in his heart the blackest misgiving, a desperate
half-consciousness that his excellent Corn-law is _in_defensible, that
his loud arguments for it are of a kind to strike men too literally
_dumb_.

To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth? Who is it that it
blesses; makes happier, wiser, beautifuler, in any way better? Who has
got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for him, like a true
servant, not like a false mock-servant; to do him any real service
whatsoever? As yet no one. We have more riches than any Nation ever
had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had
before. Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful; a strange
success, if we stop here! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people
perish; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or
satisfied. Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all men, come to a
pause; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal paralysis spreading
inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives workhouses, in Stockport
cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart itself. Have we
actually got enchanted, then; accursed by some god?--

* * * * *

Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He got gold, so
that whatsoever he touched became gold,--and he, with his long ears,
was little the better for it. Midas had misjudged the celestial
music-tones; Midas had insulted Apollo and the gods: the gods gave him
his wish, and a pair of long ears, which als