ges where the wind comes in. Can you lift a
spadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can you
only drag a weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hill
and help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron and chisel stone?
Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a harbor; and change these shifting
sands into fruitful ground. Wherever death was, bring life; that is to
be your work; that your parish refuge; that your education. So and no
otherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the continual education
of the whole people, and for their future happiness, they must have such
consistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers,
and the limbs, and the brain: and that development is only to be
obtained by hand-labor, of which you have these four great
divisions--hand-labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in
art, hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak
to-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity.

I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman and of the
shepherd;--to dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it--the first
task of man, and the final one--the education always of noblest
lawgivers, kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of
David, of all the true strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: the
pride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on the
earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing:--not
steam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth
with steam-whistling. You will have no prophet's voice accompanied by
that shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that lately, in
Cumberland, in the chief pastoral district of England--in Wordsworth's
own home--a procession of villagers on their festa day provided for
themselves, by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of
them.

Give me patience while I put the principle of machine labor before you,
as clearly and in as short compass as possible; it is one that should be
known at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to employ a
hundred men on his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is
enough, but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise
from it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. He is
obliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the men in moderate
comfort, and can only by economy accumulate much for himself