nsider what means there may be, first, of
growing forest where its growth will improve climate; secondly, of
splintering the forests which now make continents of fruitful land
pathless and poisonous, into fagots for fire;--so gaining at once
dominion icewards and sunwards. Your steam power has been given (you
will find eventually) for work such as that: and not for excursion
trains, to give the labourer a moment's breath, at the peril of his
breath for ever, from amidst the cities which it has crushed into masses
of corruption. When you know how to build cities, and how to rule them,
you will be able to breathe in their streets, and the "excursion" will
be the afternoon's walk or game in the fields round them.

160. "But nothing of this work will pay?"

No; no more than it pays to dust your rooms, or wash your doorsteps. It
will pay; not at first in currency, but in that which is the end and the
source of currency,--in life; (and in currency richly afterwards). It
will pay in that which is more than life,--in light, whose true price
has not yet been reckoned in any currency, and yet into the image of
which, all wealth, one way or other, must be cast. For your riches must
either be as the lightning, which,

Begot but in a cloud,
Though shining bright, and speaking loud,
Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race;
And, where it gilds, it wounds the place;--

or else, as the lightning of the sacred sign, which shines from one part
of the heaven to the other. There is no other choice; you must either
take dust for deity, spectre for possession, fettered dream for life,
and for epitaph, this reversed verse of the great Hebrew hymn of economy
(Psalm cxii.):--"He hath gathered together, he hath stripped the poor,
his iniquity remaineth for ever:"--or else, having the sun of justice to
shine on you, and the sincere substance of good in your possession, and
the pure law and liberty of life within you, leave men to write this
better legend over your grave:--

"He hath dispersed abroad. He hath given to the poor. His righteousness
remaineth for ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[78] In the present general examination, I concede so much to ordinary
economists as to ignore all _innocent_ poverty. I adapt my reasoning,
for once, to the modern English practical mind, by assuming poverty to
be always criminal; the conceivable exceptions we will examine
afterwards.

[79] [I have no terms of English, and can fi