complain._

And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness;
complacently shewest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous
cushions; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep?
Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest
thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any _idle_ hero, saint, god,
or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the
Earth, in the Waters, under the Earth, is none like unto thee.
Thou art an original figure in this Creation; a denizen in
Mayfair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century
alone! One monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is
his 'Religion?' That Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning,
beggary or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is
a lie; and that Man and his Life are a lie.--Alas, alas, who of
us _is_ there that can say, I have worked? The faithfulest of us
are unprofitable servants; the faithfulest of us know that best.
The faithfulest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel,
"Much of my life has been trifled away!" But he that has, and
except 'on public occasions' professes to have, no function but
that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner; and of
begetting sons to go idle; and to address Chief Spinners and
Diggers, who at least _are_ spinning and digging, "Ye scandalous
persons who produce too much"--My Corn-Law friends, on what
imaginary still richer Eldorados, and true iron-spikes with law
of gravitation, are ye rushing!

As to the Wages of Work there might innumerable things be said;
there will and must yet innumerable things be said and spoken, in
St. Stephen's and out of St. Stephen's; and gradually not a few
things be ascertained and written, on Law-parchment, concerning
this very matter:--'Fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work' is
the most unrefusable demand! Money-wages 'to the extent of
keeping your worker alive that he may work more;' these, unless
you mean to dismiss him straightway out of this world, are
indispensable alike to the noblest Worker and to the least noble!

One thing only I will say here, in special reference to the
former class, the noble and noblest; but throwing light on all
the other classes and their arrangements of this difficult
matter: The 'wages' of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or
else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's Labour-
bank, or any the most improved establishment of banking and
money-changing, needest t