ster
Laws,'--that is to say, in a world such as ours, to guard against
'gluts;' against honest operatives, who had done their work,
remaining unfed! I say, _you_ were appointed to preside over the
Distribution and Apportionment of the Wages of Work done; and to
see well that there went no labourer without his hire, were it of
money-coins, were it of hemp gallows-ropes: that function was
yours, and from immemorial time has been; yours, and as yet no
other's. These poor shirt-spinners have forgotten much, which by
the virtual unwritten law of their position they should have
remembered: but by any written recognised law of their position,
what have they forgotten? They were set to make shirts. The
Community with all its voices commanded them, saying, "Make
shirts;"--and there the shirts are! Too many shirts? Well, that
is a novelty, in this intemperate Earth, with its nine-hundred
millions of bare backs! But the Community commanded you, saying,
"See that the shirts are well apportioned, that our Human Laws be
emblem of God's Laws;"--and where is the apportionment? Two
million shirtless or ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in
Workhouse Bastilles, five million more (according to some) in
Ugolino Hunger-cellars; and for remedy, you say, what say you?--
"Raise _our_ rents!" I have not in my time heard any stranger
speech, not even on the Shores of the Dead Sea. You continue
addressing those poor shirt-spinners and over-producers, in
really a _too_ triumphant manner:

"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse us of
overproduction? We take the Heavens and the Earth to witness
that we have produced nothing at all. Not from us proceeds this
frightful _over_plus of shirts. In the wide domains of created
Nature, circulates no shirt or thing of our producing. Certain
fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of fair
audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we have produced, and they are
openly nailed up there. He that accuses us of producing, let him
shew himself, let him name what and when. We are innocent of
producing;--ye ungrateful, what mountains of things have we not,
on the contrary, had to 'consume,' and make away with! Mountains
of those your heaped manufactures, wheresoever edible or
wearable, have they not disappeared before us, as if we had the
talent of ostriches, of cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty
to eat? Ye ungrateful!--and did you not grow under the shadow of
our wings? Are