he insane Corn-Laws totally
abolished, all speech of them ended, and 'from ten to twenty years of
new possibility to live and find wages' conceded us in consequence:
What the English Government might be expected to accomplish or attempt
towards rendering the existence of our Labouring Millions somewhat
less anomalous, somewhat less impossible, in the years that are to
follow those 'ten or twenty,' if either 'ten' or 'twenty' there be?

It is the most momentous question. For all this of the Corn-Law
Abrogation, and what can follow therefrom, is but as the shadow on
King Hezekiah's Dial: the shadow has gone back twenty years; but will
again, in spite of Free-Trades and Abrogations, travel forward its old
fated way. With our present system of individual Mammonism, and
Government by Laissez-faire, this Nation cannot live. And if, in the
priceless interim, some new life and healing be not found, there is no
second respite to be counted on. The shadow on the Dial advances
thenceforth without pausing. What Government can do? This that they
call 'Organising of Labour' is, if well understood, the Problem of the
whole Future, for all who will in future pretend to govern men. But
our first preliminary stage of it, How to deal with the Actual
Labouring Millions of England? this is the imperatively pressing
Problem of the Present, pressing with a truly fearful intensity and
imminence in these very years and days. No Government can longer
neglect it: once more, what can our Government do in it?

* * * * *

Governments are of very various degrees of activity: some, altogether
Lazy Governments, in 'free countries' as they are called, seem in
these times almost to profess to do, if not nothing, one knows not at
first what. To debate in Parliament, and gain majorities; and
ascertain who shall be, with a toil hardly second to Ixion's, the
Prime Speaker and Spoke-holder, and keep the Ixion's-Wheel going, if
not forward, yet round? Not altogether so:--much, to the experienced
eye, is not what it seems! Chancery and certain other Law-Courts seem
nothing; yet in fact they are, the worst of them, something: chimneys
for the devilry and contention of men to escape by;--a very
considerable something! Parliament too has its tasks, if thou wilt
look; fit to wear-out the lives of toughest men. The celebrated
Kilkenny Cats, through their tumultuous congress, cleaving the ear of
Night, could they be said to do nothin