necks;
we shall have room again to breathe; time to bethink ourselves,
to repent and consider! A precious and thrice-precious space of
years; wherein to struggle as for life in reforming our foul
ways; in alleviating, instructing, regulating our people;
seeking, as for life, that something like spiritual food be
imparted them, some real governance and guidance be provided
them! It will be a priceless time. For our new period or
paroxysm of commercial prosperity will and can, on the old
methods of 'Competition and Devil take the hindmost,' prove but a
paroxysm: a new paroxysm,--likely enough, if we do not use it
better, to be our _last._ In this, of itself, is no salvation.
If our Trade in twenty years, 'flourishing' as never Trade
flourished, could double itself; yet then also, by the old
Laissez-faire method, our Population is doubled: we shall
then be as we are, only twice as many of us, twice and ten
times as unmanageable!

All this dire misery, therefore; all this of our poor Workhouse
Workmen, of our Chartisms, Trades-strikes, Corn-Laws, Toryisms,
and the general downbreak of Laissez-faire in these days,--may we
not regard it as a voice from the dumb bosom of Nature, saying to
us: Behold! Supply-and-demand is not the one Law of Nature;
Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man,--how far from
it! Deep, far deeper than Supply-and-demand, are Laws,
Obligations sacred as Man's Life itself: these also, if you will
continue to do work, you shall now learn and obey. He that will
learn them, behold Nature is on his side, he shall yet work and
prosper with noble rewards. He that will not learn them, Nature
is against him; he shall not be able to do work in Nature's
empire,--not in hers. Perpetual mutiny, contention, hatred,
isolation, execration shall wait on his footsteps, till all men
discern that the thing which he attains, however golden it look
or be, is not success, but the want of success.

Supply-and-demand,--alas! For what noble work was there ever yet
any audible 'demand' in that poor sense? The man of Macedonia,
speaking in vision to an Apostle Paul, "Come over and help us,"
did not specify what rate of wages he would give! Or was the
Christian Religion itself accomplished by Prize-Essays,
Bridgewater Bequests, and a 'minimum of Four thousand five
hundred a year?'' No demand that I heard of was made then,
audible in any Labour-market, Manchester Chamber of Commerce, or
othe