in his shoes! He has to command a thousand men. And not
imaginary commanding; no, it is real, incessantly practical. The evil
passions of so many men (with the Devil in them, as in all of us) he
has to vanquish; by manifold force of speech and of silence, to
repress or evade. What a force of silence, to say nothing of the
others, is in Plugson! For these his thousand men he has to provide
raw-material, machinery, arrangement, houseroom; and ever at the
week's end, wages by due sale. No Civil-List, or Goulburn-Baring
Budget has he to fall back upon, for paying of his regiment; he has to
pick his supplies from the confused face of the whole Earth and
Contemporaneous History, by his dexterity alone. There will be dry
eyes if he fail to do it!--He exclaims, at present, 'black in the
face,' near strangled with Dilettante Legislation: "Let me have
elbow-room, throat-room, and I will not fail! No, I will spin yet, and
conquer like a giant: what 'sinews of war' lie in me, untold resources
towards the Conquest of this Planet, if instead of hanging me, you
husband them, and help me!"--My indomitable friend, it is _true_; and
thou shalt and must be helped.

This is not a man I would kill and strangle by Corn-Laws, even if I
could! No, I would fling my Corn-Laws and Shotbelts to the Devil; and
try to help this man. I would teach him, by noble precept and
law-precept, by noble example most of all, that Mammonism was not the
essence of his or of my station in God's Universe; but the
adscititious excrescence of it; the gross, terrene, godless embodiment
of it; which would have to become, more or less, a godlike one. By
noble _real_ legislation, by true _noble's_-work, by unwearied,
valiant, and were it wageless effort, in my Parliament and in my
Parish, I would aid, constrain, encourage him to effect more or less
this blessed change. I should know that it would have to be effected;
that unless it were in some measure effected, he and I and all of us,
I first and soonest of all, were doomed to perdition!--Effected it
will be; unless it were a Demon that made this Universe; which I, for
my own part, do at no moment, under no form, in the least believe.

May it please your Serene Highnesses, your Majesties, Lordships and
Law-wardships, the proper Epic of this world is not now 'Arms and the
Man;' how much less, 'Shirt-frills and the Man:' no, it is now 'Tools
and the Man:' that, henceforth to all time, is now our Epic;--and you,
first o