much,--and the freest Trade in Corn, total abolition of
Tariffs, and uttermost 'Increase of Manufactures' and 'Prosperity of
Commerce,' will permanently mend no jot of it. The Working Aristocracy
must strike into a new path; must understand that money alone is _not_
the representative either of man's success in the world, or of man's
duties to man; and reform their own selves from top to bottom, if they
wish England reformed. England will not be habitable long, unreformed.

The Working Aristocracy--Yes, but on the threshold of all this, it is
again and again to be asked, What of the Idle Aristocracy? Again and
again, What shall we say of the Idle Aristocracy, the Owners of the
Soil of England; whose recognised function is that of handsomely
consuming the rents of England, shooting the partridges of England,
and as an agreeable amusement (if the purchase-money and other
conveniences serve), dilettante-ing in Parliament and Quarter-Sessions
for England? We will say mournfully, in the presence of Heaven and
Earth,--that we stand speechless, stupent, and know not what to say!
That a class of men entitled to live sumptuously on the marrow of the
earth; permitted simply, nay entreated, and as yet entreated in vain,
to do nothing at all in return, was never heretofore seen on the face
of this Planet. That such a class is transitory, exceptional, and,
unless Nature's Laws fall dead, cannot continue. That it has continued
now a moderate while; has, for the last fifty years, been rapidly
attaining its state of perfection. That it will have to find its
duties and do them; or else that it must and will cease to be seen on
the face of this Planet, which is a Working one, not an Idle one.

Alas, alas, the Working Aristocracy, admonished by Trades-unions,
Chartist conflagrations, above all by their own shrewd sense kept in
perpetual communion with the fact of things, will assuredly reform
themselves, and a working world will still be possible:--but the fate
of the Idle Aristocracy, as one reads its horoscope hitherto in
Corn-Laws and suchlike, is an abyss that fills one with despair. Yes,
my rosy fox-hunting brothers, a terrible _Hippocratic look_ reveals
itself (God knows, not to my joy) through those fresh buxom
countenances of yours. Through your Corn-Law Majorities,
Sliding-Scales, Protecting-Duties, Bribery-Elections, and triumphant
Kentish-fire, a thinking eye discerns ghastly images of ruin, too
ghastly for words; a handwriti