omeless. He can build stone
or marble houses; but to continue in them is denied him. The wealth of
a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is
loved and blessed by! The herdsman in his poor clay shealing, where
his very cow and dog are friends to him, and not a cataract but
carries memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods old
recognition: his life, all encircled as in blessed mother's-arms, is
it poorer than Slick's with the ass-loads of yellow metal on his back?
Unhappy Slick! Alas, there has so much grown nomadic, apelike, with
us: so much will have, with whatever pain, repugnance and
'impossibility,' to alter itself, to fix itself again,--in some wise
way, in any not delirious way!

* * * * *

A question arises here: Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps some not
far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,' your Master-Worker may
not find it possible, and needful, to grant his Workers permanent
_interest_ in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become, in
practical result, what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a
joint enterprise; all men, from the Chief Master down to the lowest
Overseer and Operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for
it?--Which question I do not answer. The answer, near or else far, is
perhaps, Yes;--and yet one knows the difficulties. Despotism is
essential in most enterprises; I am told, they do not tolerate
'freedom of debate' on board a Seventy-four! Republican senate and
_plebiscita_ would not answer well in Cotton-Mills. And yet observe
there too: Freedom, not nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom;
this is indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile
Despotism with Freedom:--well, is that such a mystery? Do you not
already know the way? It is to make your Despotism _just_. Rigorous as
Destiny; but just too, as Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God: all
men obey these, and have no 'Freedom' at all but in obeying them. The
way is already known, part of the way;--and courage and some qualities
are needed for walking on it!

FOOTNOTES:

[29] _Report on the Training of Pauper Children_ (1841), p. 18.

[30] Lockhart's _Life of Scott_.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LANDED.

A man with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds a day,
given him freely, without condition at all,--on condition, as it now
runs, that he will sit with his hands in his pockets and do no
mischief, pa