Brisk are we, whate'er betide:
To give space for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide?' *

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* Goethe, _Wilhelm Meister_
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Fourteen hundred years ago, it was by a considerable 'Emigration
Service,' never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion and
apparatus, that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable Island,--
and got into our present difficulties among others!

It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, is
of slow temper; essentially conservative. In our wildest periods
of reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice always the
invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to admit the
minimum of New; to expand, if it be possible, some old habit or
method, already found fruitful, into new growth for the new need.
It is an instinct worthy of all honour; akin to all strength and
all wisdom. The Future hereby is not dissevered from the Past,
but based continuously on it; grows with all the vitalities of
the Past, and is rooted down deep into the beginnings of us. The
English Legislature is entirely repugnant to believe in 'new
epochs.' The English Legislature does not occupy itself with
epochs; has, indeed, other business to do than looking at the
Time-Horologe and hearing it tick! Nevertheless new epochs do
actually come; and with them new imperious peremptory
necessities; so that even an English Legislature has to look up,
and admit, though with reluctance, that the hour has struck. The
hour having struck, let us not say 'impossible:'--it will have to
be possible! 'Contrary to the habits of Parliament, the habits
of Government?' Yes: but did any Parliament or Government ever
sit in a Year Forty-three before? One of the most original,
unexampled years and epochs; in several important respects,
totally unlike any other! For Time, all-edacious and all-
feracious, does run on: and the Seven Sleepers, awakening hungry
after a hundred years, find that it is not their old nurses who
can now give them suck!

For the rest, let not any Parliament, Aristocracy, Millocracy, or
Member of the Governing Class, condemn with much triumph this
small specimen of 'remedial measures;' or ask again, with the
least anger, of this Editor, What is to be done, How that
alarming problem of the Working Classes is to be managed?
Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. A certain
Editor thanks the gods that nobody pays him three hundred
thousand pounds a