f all others, I think, were wise to take note of that!

CHAPTER XIII.

DEMOCRACY.

If the Serene Highnesses and Majesties do not take note of that, then,
as I perceive, _that_ will take note of itself! The time for levity,
insincerity, and idle babble and play-acting, in all kinds, is gone
by; it is a serious, grave time. Old long-vexed questions, not yet
solved in logical words or parliamentary laws, are fast solving
themselves in facts, somewhat unblessed to behold! This largest of
questions, this question of Work and Wages, which ought, had we heeded
Heaven's voice, to have begun two generations ago or more, cannot be
delayed longer without hearing Earth's voice. 'Labour' will verily
need to be somewhat 'organised,' as they say,--God knows with what
difficulty. Man will actually need to have his debts and earnings a
little better paid by man; which, let Parliaments speak of them or be
silent of them, are eternally his due from man, and cannot, without
penalty and at length not without death-penalty, be withheld. How much
ought to cease among us straightway; how much ought to begin
straightway, while the hours yet are!

Truly they are strange results to which this of leaving all to 'Cash;'
of quietly shutting-up the God's Temple, and gradually opening
wide-open the Mammon's Temple, with 'Laissez-faire, and Every man for
himself,'--have led us in these days! We have Upper, speaking Classes,
who indeed do 'speak' as never man spake before; the withered
flimsiness, the godless baseness and barrenness of whose Speech might
of itself indicate what kind of Doing and practical Governing went on
under it! For Speech is the gaseous element out of which most kinds of
Practice and Performance, especially all kinds of moral Performance,
condense themselves, and take shape; as the one is, so will the other
be. Descending, accordingly, into the Dumb Class in its Stockport
Cellars and Poor-Law Bastilles, have we not to announce that they also
are hitherto unexampled in the History of Adam's Posterity?

Life was never a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb
millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings,
injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all,
but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore. As
bond-slaves, _villani_, _bordarii_, _sochemanni_, nay indeed as dukes,
earls and kings, men were oftentimes made weary of their life; and had
to say, in the sweat