is--not, necessarily, to get more
cotton. There were words written twenty years ago[93] which would have
saved many of us some shivering, had they been minded in time. Shall we
read them again?

"The Continental people, it would seem, are importing our machinery,
beginning to spin cotton, and manufacture for themselves; to cut us out
of this market, and then out of that! Sad news, indeed; but
irremediable. By no means the saddest news--the saddest news, is that we
should find our national existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend
on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any
other people. A most narrow stand for a great nation to base itself on!
A stand which, with all the Corn-law abrogations conceivable, I do not
think will be capable of enduring.

"My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we came honestly
down from it and said--'This is our minimum of cotton prices; we care
not, for the present, to make cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so
blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton fur,
your heart with copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny; become ye the
general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!' I admire a nation which
fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other nations to the end
of the world. Brothers, we will cease to undersell them; we will be
content to equal-sell them; to be happy selling equally with them! I do
not see the use of underselling them: cotton-cloth is already twopence a
yard, or lower; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among us.
Let inventive men cease to spend their existence incessantly contriving
how cotton can be made cheaper; and try to invent a little how cotton at
its present cheapness could be somewhat justlier divided among us.

"Let inventive men consider--whether the secret of this universe does
after all consist in making money. With a hell which means--'failing to
make money,' I do not think there is any heaven possible that would suit
one well. In brief, all this Mammon gospel of supply-and-demand,
competition _laissez faire_, and devil take the hindmost (foremost, is
it not, rather, Mr. Carlyle?), 'begins to be one of the shabbiest
gospels ever preached.'"

159. The way to produce more fuel[94] is first to make your coal mines
safer, by sinking more shafts; then set all your convicts to work in
them, and if, as is to be hoped, you succeed in diminishing the supply
of that sort of labourer, co