J. Mathew, Esq. W. Edgar, Esq. Marquis of Westminster J. A. Wigan, Esq. Lord Foley James Mackillop, Esq. Don Gregoria de Meir y Feran. Thomas Fielden, Esq. Thomas Parr, Esq. F. Steiner, Esq. W. S. Burnside, Esq. 250,000 The following lines, written by W. A. Russel, of Bristol, and heading an article on "True Reform" in the Beehive of March 22nd, 1873, will serve as a suitable appendix to the preceding list:-"The evil inherent in the existing monetary arrangements of society may thus be briefly pointed out: all the surplus profits acknowledged under the name of dividends, etc., over and above the costs of production or management, go to sustain more or less in idleness classes or individuals who do no part of the work implied; these favoured individuals again at their death leaving their claims in the hands of successors, and thus keeping up in perpetuity a mass of idleness (I am not using the term individually) which ever weighs like an ill-advised mortgage on the energies of the really industrious portion of the community." The kind of idleness indulged in by some of the rich inheritors of this land is mostly a mixture of indolence, freaks, hoaxes, and eccentricities not seldom bordering on insanity; for when the torpid state of indolence called "killing time has exhausted the energy of the subject indicated by the active verb "to kill," he, in default of exercising a useful calling in husbandry, trade, navigation, or the learned professions, breaks out into capricious pranks and whimsical actions which in the eyes of other people may appear ridiculous and harmless folly, but which should be regarded as detestable acts of culpable idleness. A notable instance of the follies committed through idleness, and supported by inherited riches, was Mr. John Knight, of Henley Hill, Staffordshire, who died in September 1872. He inherited, some twenty years before his death, an estate producing a net rental of £1,500. When he died he left behind him. personal property to the amount of £62,000. He was not a social man, he neither made nor received visits, but lived in a very eccentric fashion, and wrote a great many letters. He was fond of German bands, and entertained these wandering minstrels at the hall, and let the servants dance to their music. He shunned the company of his equals, and cultivated that of the lower animals keeping a great many dogs, and feeding them with mutton. His house swarmed with rats, and he sometimes fed and petted them, and sometimes shot them. He built splendid greenhouses and fruiteries, but either allowed the fruit to rot upon the trees, or fed the animals with it. He made his grooms ride races in a ring, while he stood by to enjoy the fun; and he took a maidservant with him when he went out shooting rooks. He would dress himself in skins, paint stripes on his face, and rush in among his servants, gun in hand, to enjoy their fright. Others, again, enjoy their idleness in a more inoffensive and quiet manner, somewhat in the fashion of the "Independent Gentleman," whose thoughts and fancies Mr. John Ruskin in Fors Clavigera imagines to run in this vein :-"A woman is going two miles through it to-day to fetch me my letters at 10 o'clock; half-a-dozen men are building a wall for me, to keep the sheep out of my garden; and a railroard stoker is holding his own against the north wind, to fetch me some Brobdignag raspberry plants to put in it; somebody in the East End of London is making boots for me, for I can't wear those I have much longer; a washerwoman is in suds, somewhere, to get me a clean shirt for to-morrow; a fisherman is in a dangerous weather, somewhere, catching me some fish for Lent; and my cook will soon be making me pancakes, for it is Shrove Tuesday. Having written this sentence, I go to the fire, warm my fingers, saunter a little, listlessly, about the room, and grumble because I can't see to the other side of the lake. From the diary of the said gentleman." The existence of a number of 150,000 persons returned by the census as having no stated rank, profession, or occupation, is another disgrace to the present social order. No such reproach will ever become applicable in the new social state; for, under the proposed regulations, it will simply be impossible for anyone to exist as a member of the community without work or useful occupation. The abhorrence which all sensible men should feel against idleness is well expressed in the following lines by a writer whose name we are, however, not able to give. He says:-" Men or women with no business, nothing to do, are absolute pests to society. They are thieves, stealing that which is not theirs; beggars, eating that which they have not earned; drones, wasting the fruits of others' industry; leeches, sucking the blood of others; evil-doers, setting an example of idleness and dishonest living; vampires, eating out the life of the community." The noble-minded Carlyle is greatly provoked at the sight of idleness, and addresses the following terrible challenge to the idler:-" And who art thou that braggest of thy life of idleness; complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages, sumptuous cushions, appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep. Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest thou, if it be not in May Fair alone, any idle hero, saint, god, or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the heavens, in the earth, in the waters, under the earth, is none like unto thee. Thou art an original figure in this creation,-a denizen in May Fair alone, in this extraordinary century or half century alone! One monster there is alone in the world the idle man." Mr. Herbert Spencer says, in his work "The Study of Sociology: "-" Clearly, then, we have grounds for inferring that, along with the progress to a regulative organization higher than the present, there will be a change of the kind indicated in the conception of honour. It will become a matter of wonder that there should ever have existed those who thought it admirable to enjoy without working, at the expense of others who worked without enjoying." How the army and police is to be organized has already been explained in the chapter on defensive and protective labour. Prisoners, if there are any, will be most profitably employed; for the produce of their labour will in no case disastrously compete with free labour, but will in every instance lessen the burden of the latter. With the extinction of pauperism 6,000 union district officers will likewise become a valuable accessory to industrial and other labour. The abolition of private property will also swell the ranks of labour with an addition of 73,000 persons, not even including their families and servants, but heads of families only, the proprietors of land, houses, mines, ships, coal, etc. CHAPTER XLII.-PROPORTION OF NUMBERS BETWEEN THE PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE CLASSES OF SOCIETY. "England has many labourers, but fewer labourers than inhabitants."-LOUIS BLANC. THER HE writer subjoins here three summary tables, which give the number of the great subdivisions of the people of England, Scotland, and Wales each class also including their children. |