nder the
overseer's lash. For the free man there is always hope; for the slave
there is none. Again, the first apostles of Co-operation expected
nothing less than that their ideas would be universally, immediately,
and ardently adopted. That was a good many years ago. The method of
Co-operation still offers the most wonderful vision of universal
welfare, easily attainable on the simple condition of honesty, ever
put before humanity; yet we see how little has been achieved and how
numerous have been the failures. Again, though the advantages of
temperance are continually preached to working men, beer remains the
national beverage; yet even those of us who would rather see the
working classes sober and self-restrained than water-drinkers by Act
of Parliament or solemn pledge, acknowledge how good it is that the
preaching of temperance was begun. Again, we have got most of those
Points for which the Chartists once so passionately struggled. As for
those we have not got, there is no longer much enthusiasm left for
them. The world does not seem so far very substantially advanced by
the concession of the Points; yet we would not willingly give them
back and return to the old order. Again, we have opened free museums,
containing all kinds of beautiful things: the people visit them in
thousands; yet they remain ignorant of Art, and have no yearning
discoverable for Art. In spite of this, we would not willingly close
the museums.

The dreamer, in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain
factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially
takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed,
indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in
humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these
are the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most
important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with
an incurable indolence of mind or body, which keeps them rooted in the
old grooves and destroys every germ of ambition at its first
appearance.

The latest failure of the Well-intentioned, so far as we have yet
found out, is the Education Act, for which the London rate has now
mounted to nine-pence in the pound. It is a failure, like the
emancipation of the slaves; because, though it has done some things
well, it has wholly failed to achieve the great results confidently
predicted for it by its advocates in the year '68. What