https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0c90e3b311155b46c37d98cc789d3d99.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=AIb2cT91rZBHZ-WVKcQcZghN9uBYX0RiEd-4qH78FnMbld81NMUcCCjTQLCdcXQ8VirV8D1mE%7EGkBWAE3Wos6o8%7EQ%7EHPyiJdiX5V3RohHTVFPzOhYtI89V9TdkaqRnsFNbHBfPtgBB%7EkUhmy57aGQBzaNQ7Z47tulMVQaa8aNIfw82CLvDCnfRSM5prmlCHA7iyazACLKGZXkIDbPlHVqPKHZxp95Kz4fGVuptbRT%7EPfhUhu1mXZsFF88asNdS5H6Jzg2YwgCqYsrJkq-116jl%7E7LAmrqeHcnyVQ0bbUc5x721hfQ98AncUCekb46UXoylL9yhf9Nd0DQckzu2HmFg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 6713fa61109732cbccca1659b9fd6030 PDF Text Text Desirable Mansions: A TRACT Reprinted, with a few alterations, from “Progress, June, 1883. By EDWARD CARPENTER. THIRD EDITION PRICE ONE PENNY. Published by THE MODERN PRESS, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1887. �BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Towards Democracy. New edition, with numerous added Poems, crown 8vo, cloth, 260 pp. Price 2s. 6d “ A book whose power will certainly make it known.”— Dublin University Review. “ Truly ‘ mystic, wonderful ’—like nothing so much as a nightmare after too earnest a study of the Koran! ”— Graphic. “ Its plan includes a poetical appeal to the different nationalities of the world, a sketch of the characteristic features of England and English towns, and all kinds of industrial work, finally a series of dramatic pictures whose vividness and beauty seem magical.” — Cambridge Review. Modern Science : a Criticism. pp. Price is. Crown 8vo, paper, 7.6 Modern Money-Lending; or, the Meaning of DividendsA Pamphlet. Price 2d. Second edition. England’s Ideal. Price 2d. John Heywood, Deansgate and Ridgefield’ Manchester: 11, Paternoster Buildings, London. and ALSO Social Progress and Individual Effort. Reprinted from To-day. Price id. Co-operative Production, with an account of the experi­ ment of Leclaire. Price id. THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. For popular pamphlets on all political, social and, economical subjects, apply to The Modern Press, or send stamped envelope for catalogue. �DESIRABLE MANSIONS FTER all, why should we rail against the rich ? I think if anything they should be pitied. In nine cases out of ten it is not a man’s fault. He is born in the lap of luxury, he grows up surrounded by absurd and impossible ideas about life, the innumerable chains of habit and circumstance tighten upon him, and when the time comes that he would escape, he finds he cannot. He is condemned to flop up and down in his cage for the re­ mainder of his days—a spectacle of boredom, and a warning to gods and men. I go into the houses of the rich. In the drawing-room I see chill weary faces, peaked features of ill-health ; down­ stairs and in the kitchen I meet with rosy smiles, kissable cheeks, and hear sounds of song and laughter. What is this ? Is it possible that the real human beings live with Jeames below-stairs! Often as I pass and see in suburb or country some “ desir­ able mansion ” rising from the ground, I think : That man is building a prison for himself. So it is—a prison. I would rather spend a calendar month in Clerkenwell or Holloway than I would in that desirable mansion. A young lady that I knew, and who lived in such a mansion, used with her sisters to teach a class of factory girls. Every now and again one of the girls would say, “ Eh, Miss, how I would like to be a grand lady like you ! ” Then she would answer, “ Yes, but you know you wouldn’t be able to do everthing you liked ; for instance, you wouldn’t be allowed to go out walking when �4 you liked.” “ Eh, dear I ” they would say to one another, “ she is not allowed to go out walking when she likes—she is not allowed to go out walking when she likes ! ” Certainly you are not allowed to go out walking when you like. Reader, did you ever spend a day within those desirable walls ? I have, many. I wake up in the morning. It is fine and bright. I think to myself: I will have a pleasant stroll before breakfast. Yes—man proposes. It is all very well to meditate a morning walk, but where O where are my clothes ? I cannot very well go out without them. What can have be­ come of them ? Suddenly it occurs to me: James, honest soul, has taken them away to brush. Good. I wait. Nothing happens. I ring the bell. James appears. “ My clothes, James.” “Yes, sir.” Again I wait—an intolerable time. At last the familiar jacket and trousers appear. Good. Now * I can go out. Not so fast—where are your boots ? Boots, good gracious, I had forgotten them. Heaven knows where they are—I don’t. Probably fifty yards away. I creep downstairs. All is quiet. The servants are evidently at breakfast. It would be madness to hope to get boots brushed at such a moment. I would like to clean them myself. In fact I am fond of cleaning my own boots: the exercise is pleasant, and besides it is just such a little bit of menial work as I would rather do for myself than have others do for me; but, as I said before, one cannot do what one likes. In the first place, in this house where one is fifty yards away from everything one wants I have not the faintest idea where my boots are, or the means and instru­ ments of blacking them ; in the second place an even more fatal objection is that if I did succeed in committing this deed of darkness the consequent uproar in the house would be per­ fectly indescribable. The outrage on propriety would not only shock the feelings of the world below-stairs, but it would put to confusion the master of the house, upset the whole domestic machinery, create unpleasant qualms in the minds * A friend tells me that once, to revenge himself for this sort of trifling, he concealed his nether garment under the mattrass and then, in the morning, slyly watched the footman as he vainly sought round the room for it. The consequence however was that he fell very much in the esti­ mation of the latter, who doubtless thought that, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, his master’s visitor •' had gone to bed with his breeches on.” �5 of the other guests, and possibly make me feel that I had better not have lived. Accordingly, I abandon the idea of my pleasant stroll. It is not worth such a sacrifice. The birds are singing outside, the flowers are gay in the morning sun — but it must not be. Within, in the sitting-rooms, chaos reigns. Chairs and tables are piled in cheerful confusion upon one another, carpets are partially strewn with tea-leaves. To read a book or write an aimless letter to some one (the usual resource of people in desirable mansions) is clearly impossible; to do anything in the way of house-work is forbidden—it being well understood in such places that one may do any­ thing except what is useful. There remains nothing but to beat a retreat to my chamber again—put my hands in my pockets and whistle at the open window. “ Who was that I heard whistling so early this morning ? ” says my kindly old host at breakfast. “ O, it was you, was it ? I expect now you’re an early riser ; get up at seven, take a walk before breakfast; that sort of thing—eh ? ” “Yes, when I can,” I reply with ambiguous intent. “ Well, I call that wonderful,” says an elderly matron—not likely, as far as ap­ pearances go, to be accused of a similar practice—“ such energy, you know.” “ What a strong constitution you must have to be able to stand it! ” remarks a charming young lady on whom it has not yet dawned that the vast majority of human kind have their breakfast before half-past nine. This is not a good beginning to the day ; but the rest is like unto it. I find that there are certain things to be done—a certain code of things that you may do, a certain way of doing them, a certain way of putting your knife and fork on your plate. When you come down to dinner in the evening you must put on what the Yankees call a claw-hammer coat. It is not certain, (and that is just the grisly part of it) what would happen if you did not do this. In some societies evidently such a casualty has never been contemplated. I have heard people seriously discussing—in cases where the required article was missing—what could be done, where one might be borrowed, &c.—but clearly it did not occur to them that anyone could dine in his natural clothes. Sometimes, when in a fashionable church, I have wondered whether it would be possible to worship God in a flannel shirt— but I suppose that to go out to a dinner party in such a �6 costume would be even more unthinkable. As I said before, you are in prison. Submit to the prison rules, and it is all right—attempt to go beyond them, and you are visited with condign punishment. The rules have no sense, but that does not matter (possibly some ot them had sense once, but it must have been a very long time ago); the people are good people, no better nor worse in themselves than the real workers, the real hands and hearts of the world; but they are condemned to banishment from the world, condemned into the prison houses of futility. The stream of human life goes past them as they gaze wearily upon it through their plate-glass windows; the great Mother’s breasts of our common Humanity, with all its toils and suf­ ferings and mighty joys, are withheld from them. Dimly al last I think I understand why it is their faces are so chill and sad, their unnourished lives so unhealthy and over-sensitive. Truly, if I could pity anyone, I would them. By the side of the road there stands a little girl, crying ; she has lost her way. It is very cold, and she looks pinched and starved. “ Come in, my little girl, and sit by my cottage fire, and you’ll soon get warm; and I’ll see if I can't find you a bit of something to eat before you go on . . . Eh 1 dear ! how stupid I am—I quite forgot. I am sorry 1 can’t ask you in, but I am living in a desirable mansion now—and though we are very sorry for you, yet you see we could hardly have you into our house, for your dirty little boots would make a dreadful mess of our carpets, and we should have to dust the chairs after you had sat upon them, and you see Mrs. Vavasour might happen to come in, and she would think it so very odd ; and I know cook can’t bear beggars, and, O dear ! I’m so sorry for you—and here’s a penny, and I hope you’ll get home safely.” The stream of human life goes past. When a rich man builds himself a prison, he puts up all these fences to shut the world out—to shut himself in. If he can he builds far back from the high road. In the front of his house he has a bound­ less polite lawn, with polite flower beds, afar from vulgarpeople and animals. Rows of polite servants attend upon him; and there within of inanity and politeness he dies. Of what human life really consists in he has little idea. He has not the faintest notion of what is necessary for human life or happi­ �7 ness. Sometimes with an indistinct vision of accumulated evil, he says: “ Poor So-and-so, he has only ^200 a year to keep his wife and family on ! ” No wonder his own daughters dedicate themselves to “ good works.” They go out with the curate and visit at neighbouring cottages. Their visits have little appreciable effect on the people, but are a great benefit to themselves and the curate. They observe, for the first time, how life is carried on ; they see the operations of scrub­ bing and cooking (removed in their own houses afar from mortal polite eye) ; perhaps they behold a mother actually suckling her own babe, and learn that such things are pos­ sible ; finally, they “ wonder ” how “ those .people ” live, and to them their wonder (like the fear of God) is the beginning of wisdom. The lord of the mansion sits on the magisterial bench or strides about his fields, and lumps together all who are not in a similar position to himself as the “ lower classes.” After dinner in the evening, if the conversation turns on politics, he and his compeers discuss the importance of keeping the said lower classes in order, or the best method of “ raising ” them out of the ignorance and disorder in which they are supposed to wallow. And during the conversation it will be noticed that it is by everyone tacitly allowed and understood, and is, in fact, the very foundation of the whole argument, that the speakers themselves belong to an educated class, while the mass of the people are uneducated. Yet this is exactly the reverse of the truth—for they themselves belong to an ill-educated class, and the mass of the people are, by the very nature of the case, the better educated of the two. In fact, the education of the one set of people (and it is a great pity that it should be so) consists almost entirely in the study of books. That is very useful in its way, and if pro­ perly balanced with other things; but it is hardly necessary to point out that books only deal with phantoms and shadows of reality. The education of the world at large, and the real education, lies, and must always lie, in dealing with the things themselves. To put it shortly (as it has been put before), one man learns to spell a “ spade,” to write it, to rhyme it, to translate it into French and Latin—possibly, like Wordsworth, to address a sonnet to it—the other man learns to use it. Is there any comparison between the two ? �8 Now is it not curious that those good people sitting round their dinner table in the desirable mansion, or listening to a little music in the drawing-room, should actually be so ignorant of the world, and what goes on in it, as to think, and honestly believe, that they are, par excellence, the educated people in it ? * Does it ever occur to them, I often think, to inquire who made all the elegant and costly objects with which they are surrounded ? Does it ever occur to them, as they tacitly assume the inferiority of the working classes, to think of the table itself across which they speak—how beauti­ fully fitted, veneered, polished ; the cloth which lies upon it, and the weaving of it; the chairs and other furniture, so light and yet so strong, each requiring the skill of years to make ; the silver, the glass, the steel, the tempering, hardening, grinding, fitting, riveting ; the lace and damask curtains, the wonderful machinery, the care, the delicate touch, adroit manipulation ? the piano 1 the very house itself in which they spend their days ! Is there one, I say, who we will not say could make even the smallest part, but who even has the faintest idea how one of these things is.made, where it is made, who makes it ? Not one. All the care, the loving thought, the artistic design, the conscientious workmanship that have been expended, and are daily expended, on these things and the like of them—go past them unrecognised, unacknowledged. The great hymn of human labour over the earth is to them an idle song. There, in the midst of all these beautiful products of toil and ingenuity, possessing but not enjoying, futile they sit, and fancy themselves educated— fit to rule. I have heard of a fly that sat stinging upon the hindquarters of a horse, and fancied that without it the cart would not go. Fancied so, I say, until the great beast whisked its tail, and after that it fancied nothing more. Doi put these things in a strong light? May be, I do; but I put them faithfully as I have seen them, and as I see them daily. * “ . . . . People who roll about in their fine equipages scarcely knowing what to do with themselves or what ails them, and some of whom occasionally run to such places as ours to have their carriage linings or cushions altered, or to know if they *can be altered as they don't feel quite 1 comfortable.' I often think ‘ God help them,’ for no one else can. . . I insert this extract just to show how these things are regarded from the side which does not usually find expression. It is from a letter written by an elderly and gentle-hearted man, employed in a carriage factory. �9 I do not suppose that riches are an evil in themselves. I do not suppose that anything is an evil in itself. I know that even in the midst of all these shackles and impediments, that wonderfulest of things, the human soul, may work out its own salvation ; and well I know that there are no condi­ tions or circumstances of human life, nor any profession from a king to a prostitute, that may not become to it the gateway of freedom and immortality. But I daily see people setting this standard of well-to-do respectability before them, daily more and more hastening forth in quest of desirable mansions to dwell in ; and I cannot but wonder whether they realise what it is they seek ; I cannot lend my voice to swell the chorus of encouragement. Here are the clean facts. Choose for yourselves. That is all. Respectability ! Heavy-browed and hunch-backed word ' Once innocent and light-hearted as any other word, why now in thy middle age art thou become so gloomy and saturnine ? Is it that thou art responsible for the murder of the innocents ? Respectability! Vision of clean hands and blameless dress— why dost thou now appear in the form of a ghoul before me ? I confess that the sight of a dirty hand is dear to me. It warms my heart with all manner of good hopes and promises. Often and long have I thought about this matter, and in all good faith I must say that I fail to see how hands always clean are compatible with honesty. This is no play upon words. I fail to see how in the long run, any man that takes his share in the work of the world can keep his hands in this desirable state. How ? The answer is obvious enough—leave others to do the dirty work. Good ! Let it be so ; let it be granted that others shall do the scrubbing and baking, the digging, the fishing, the breaking of horses, the carpentering, build­ ing, smithing, and the myriad other jobs that have to be done, and you at the pinnacle of all this pyramid of work, above all, keep your hands clean. We shouting to you from below, exhort you—At all costs, keep your hands cle‘an ! Think how important it is, while the great ships have to be got into harbour, that your nails should be blameless ! Think if by any accident you were to do a real good piece of work, and get your hands thoroughly grimed over it, unwashable for a week, what confusion would ensue to yourself and �IO friends ! Think O think of your clients, or of the next dinner party, and earnestly and prayerfully resolve that such a fall may never be yours. Seek, we pray you, some secure work—some legal, clerical, official, capitalist, or land­ owning business, safe from the dread stain of dirty hands, whatever other dirt it may bring with it—some thoroughly gentlemanly profession, marking you clearly off from the vulgar and general masses, and the blessing of heaven go with you ! Shut yourself off from the great stream of human life, from the great sources of physical and moral health ; ignore the common labour by which you live, show clearly your contempt for it, your dislike of it, and then ask others to do it for you ; turn aside from nature, divorce yourself from the living breathing heart of the nation; and then you will have done, what the governing classes of England to-day have done, have given full directions to your own heart and brain how to shrivel and starve and die. Man is made to work with his hands. This is a fact which cannot be got over. From this central fact he cannot travel far. I don’t care whether it is an individual or a class, the life which is far removed from this becomes corrupt, shrivelled, and diseased. You may explain it how you like, but it is so. Administrative work has to be done in a nation as well as productive work ; but it must be done by men accustomed to manual labour, who have the healthy decision and primitive authentic judgment which comes of that, else it cannot be done well. In the new form of society which is slowly advancing upon us, this will be felt more than now. The higher the position of trust a man occupies the more will it be thought important that, at some period of his life, he should have been thoroughly inured to manual work ; this not only on account of the physical and moral robustness implied by it, but equally because it will be seen to be im­ possible for any one, without this experience of what is the very flesh and blood of national life, to promote the good health of the nation, or to understand the conditions under which the people live whom he has to serve. But to return to the sorrows of the well-to-do—and care that sits on the crupper of wealth. This is a world-old and well-worn subject. Yet, possibly, some of its truisms may �II bear repeating. A clergyman, preaching once on the trials of life, turned first to his rich friends and bade them call to mind, one by one, the sorrows and sufferings of the poor; then, turning to his “ poorer brethren,” he exhorted them also not to forget that the rich man had his afflictions—with which they should sympathise—amongst which afflictions, growing chiefly out of their much money, he reckoned “ last, but not least, the difficulty of finding for it an investment which should be profitable and also secure 1 ” It has been generally supposed that the poorer brethren failed to sym­ pathise with this form of suffering. But it is a very real one. What cares, what anxieties, what yellow and blue fits, what sleepless nights, dance at­ tendance on the worshiper in the great Temple of Stocks ! The capricious deity that dwells there has to be appeased by ceaseless offerings. Usury ! crookfaced idol, loathed, yet grovelled to by half the world, whose name is an abomination to speak openly, yet whose secret rites are practised by thousands who revile thy name, what spell of gloom and bilious misery dost thou cast over thy worshipers! Is it possible that the ancient curse has not yet lost its effect: that to acquire interest on money and to acquire interest in life are not the same thing ; that they are positively not com­ patible with each other; that to fly from one’s just share of labour in the world, in order to live upon the hard-earned profits of others, is not, and cannot come to good ? Is it possible, I say, reader, that there is a moral law in the world facing us quite calmly in every transaction of our lives by which it must be so—by which cowardice and sham cannot breed anything else for us but gloom and bilious misery ? In this age which rushes to stocks—to debenture, preference, consolidated, and ordinary stocks, to shares, bonds, coupons, dividends—-not even refusing scrip when it can get it—does it ever occur to us to consider what it all means ?—to con­ sider that all the money so gained is taken from some one else ; that what we have not earned cannot possibly be ours, except by gift, or (shall I say it ?) theft ? How can it then come with a blessing ? How can we not but think of the railway operatives, the porters, managers, clerks, superin­ tendents, drivers, stokers, platelayers, carriage - washers, navvies, out of whose just earnings (and from no other �12 source) our dividends are taken ? ■ Let alone honesty—what, surely, does our pride say to this ? Is it possible that this frantic dividend-dance of the present day is like a dance of dancers dancing without any music—an aimless incoherent impossible dance, weltering down at last to idiocy and oblivion ? Curious, is it not, that this subject (of dividends) is never mentioned before said wage-receiving classes ? I have often noticed that. When James enters the room, or Jeffery comes to look at the gas-fittings, the babble of stocks dies faintly away, as if ashamed of itself? and while a man will, without reserve, allude to his professional salary, he is generally as secret concerning his share-gotten gains as ladies are said to be about their age. But, as I said at first, these things are not generally a man’s fault. They are the product of the circumstances in which he is born. From his childhood he is trained osten­ sibly in the fear of God, but really in the fear of money. The * whole tenor of the conversation which he hears round him, and his early teaching, tend to impress upon him the awful dangers of not having enough. Strange that it never occurs to parents of this class to teach their children how little they can live upon, and be happy (but perhaps they do not know). Hence, the child of the poor man—even in these adverse times—grows up with some independence of mind, for he knows that if at any time he can obtain £50 or ^100 a year by the work of his hands, he will be able to bring up a little family; while the son of a rich man in the midst of a family income of fifty times ^50, learns to tremble slavishly at the prospect of the future ; dark hints of the workhouse are whispered in his ears ; father and mother, school-teachers and friends, join in pressing him into a pro­ fession which he hates—stultifying his whole life—because it will lead to ^500, or even ^1,000 a year in course of time. This is the great test, the sure criterion between two paths: which will lead to more money? The youth* Or as Mr. Locker has it, They eat and drink and scheme and plod, And go to church on Sunday; For many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy. �i3 ful tender conscience soon comes to look upon it as a duty, and the acquisition of large dividends as part of the serious work of life. Then come true the words of the preacher: he realises with painful clearness the difficulty of finding investments which shall be profitable and also secure; circulars, reports, newspaper-cuttings, and warning letters flow in upon him, sleepless nights are followed by anxious days, telegrams and railway journeys succeed each other. But the game goes on : the income gets bigger, and the fear of the workhouse looms closer ! Friendsand relations also, have shares. Some get married and others die. Hence trustee-ships and executor-ships, increasing in number year by year, coil upon coil; solicitors hover around on all sides, jungles of legal red tape have to be waded through, chancery looms up with its “ obscene birds ” upon the horizon, and the hapless boy, now an old man before his time, with snatched meals and care-lined brow, goes to and fro like an automaton—a walking testimony to his own words that “ the days of his happiness are long gone past.” Before God, I would rather with pick and shovel dig a yearlong drain beneath the open sky, breathing freely, than I would live in this jungle of idiotic duties and thin-lipped respect­ abilities that money breeds. Why the devil should the days of your happiness be gone past, except that you have lived a life to stultify the whole natural man in you ? Do you think that happiness is a little flash-in-the-pan when you are eighteen, and that is all ? Do you not know that expanding age, like a flower, lifts itself ever into a more and more exquisite sun­ light of happiness—to which Death, serene and beautiful, comes only at the last with the touch of perfected assurance ? Do you not know that the whole effort of Nature in you is towards this happiness, if you could only abandon yourself, and for one child-like moment have faith in your own mother ? But she knows it, and watches you, half amused, run after your little “ securities,” knowing surely that you must at length return to her. But wherein the affluent classes suffer most in the present day perhaps is the matter of health. Into that heaven it is indeed hard for a rich man to enter. Here again the whole tradition of his life is against him. If there is one thing that appears to me more certain than another it is, as I have �partly said before, that no individual or class can travel far from the native life of the race without becoming shrivelled, corrupt, diseased—without suffering, in fact. By the native life I mean the life of those (always the vast majority of human kind) who live and support themselves in direct contact with Nature. * To rise early, to be mostly in the open air, to do some amount of physical labour, to eat clean and simple food, are necessary and aboriginal conditions of the life of our race, and they are necessary and aboriginal conditions of health. The doctor who does not start from these as .the basis of his prescriptions does not know his work. The modern money-lender, man of stocks, or what­ ever you call him, and his family, live in the continual violation of these conditions. They get up late, are mostly indoors, do little or no physical work, and take quantities of rich and greasy food and stimulants, such as would exhaust the stomach of a strong man, but which to them, in their already enervated state, are simply fatal. Hence a long catalogue of evils, ever branching into more. Hence dys­ pepsia, nerves, liver, sexual degeneracies, and general de­ pression of vitality ; a gloomy train, but whose drawn features you will recognise if you peep into almost anyone of those desirable mansions of which I have spoken. A terrible symptom of our well-to-do (?) modern life is this want of health, and one which presses for serious attention. There is only one remedy for it; but that remedy is a sure one— the return (or advance) to a simpler mode of existence. What is the upshot of all this? There was a time when the rich man had duties attending his wealth. The lord or baron was a petty king, and had kingly responsibilities as well as power. The Sir Roger, of Addison’s time, was the succeeding type of landlord. And even to the present day there lingers, here and there, a country squire who fulfils that * It must be noticed that the working masses of our great towns do not by any means fulfil this condition. Thrust down into squalor by the very effort of others climbing to luxury, the unnaturalness and misery of their lives is the direct counterpart and inseparable accompaniment of the un­ naturalness of the lives of the rich. That the great masses of our popula­ tion to-day are in this unhealthy state does not however disprove the statement in the text—i.e., that the vast majority of mankind must live in direct contact with Nature—rather it would indicate that the present conditions can only be of brief duration. �j M fl! IUHM 15 now antiquated ideal of kindly condescension and patronage. But the modern rush of steam-engines, and the creation of an enormous class of wealthy folk, living on stocks, have completely subverted the old order. It has let loose on society a horde of wolves !—a horde of people who have no duties attaching to their mode of life, no responsibility. They roam hither and thither, seeking whom and what they may devour. Personally I have no objection to criminals, and think them quite as good as myself. But, Talk of criminal classes—can there be a doubt that the criminal classes, par excellence, in our modern society, are this horde of stock and share-mongers ? If to be a criminal is to be an enemy of society, then they are such. For their mode of life is founded on the principle of taking without giving, of claiming without earning—as much as that of any common thief. It is in vain to try and make amends for this by charity organisations and unpaid magistracies. The cure must go deeper. It is no good trying to set straight the roof and chimneys, when the whole foundation is aslant. These good people are not boarded and lodged at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but the Eternal Justice, unslumbering, causes them to build prisons (as I have said) for themselves-—plagues them with ill-health and divers unseen evils— and will and must plague them, till such time as they shall abandon the im­ possible task they have set themselves, and return to the paths of reason. The whole foundation is aslant—and aslip, as anyone may see who looks. In short, it is an age of transition. No mortal power could make durable a Society founded on Usury—universal and boundless usury. The very words scream at each other. The baron has passed away; and the landlord is passing. They each had their duties, and while they fulfilled them served their time well and faithfully. The shareholder has no duties, and is miserable, and will remain so till the final landslip, when the foundations having completely given way, he will crawl forth out of the ruins of his desirable mansion into the life and light of a new day. Less oracular than this I dare not be! As I have said before there is no conceivable condition of life in which the human soul may not find the materials of its surpassing deliverance from evil and mortality. And I for �one would not, if I had the power, cramp human life into the exhibition of one universal routine. If anyone desires to be rich, if anyone desires to gradually shut himself off from the world, to build walls and fences, to live in a house where it is impossible to get a breath of fresh air without going through half a dozen doors, and to be the prisoner of his own servants; if he desires it so that when he walks down the street he cannot whistle or sing, or shout across the road to a friend, or sit upon a doorstep when tired, or take off his coat if it be hot, but must wear certain particular clothes in a certain particular way, and be on such pins and needles as to what he may or may not do, that he is right glad when he gets back again to his own prison walls ; if he loves trustee­ ships and Egyptian Bonds, and visits from the lawyer, and feels glad when he finds a letter from the High Court of Chancery on his breakfast table, and experiences in attend­ ing to all these things that satisfaction which comes of all honest work ; if he feels renovated and braced by lying in bed of a morning, and by eating feast dinners every day, and by carefully abstaining from any bodily labour ; if dyspepsia, and gout, and biliousness, and distress of nerves are not otherwise than grateful to him ; and if he can obtain all these things without doing grievous wrong to others, by all means let him have them. Only for those who do not know what they desire I would lift up the red flag of warning. Only of that vast and ever vaster horde which to-day (chiefly, I cannot but think, in ignorance) rushes to Stocks, would I ask a moment’s pause, and to look at the bare facts, If these words should come to the eye of such an one I would pray him to think for a moment—to glance at this great enthroned Wrong in its dungeon palace (notffhe less a wrong because the laws coun­ tenance and encourage it)—to listen for the cry of the home­ less many, trodden under foot, a yearly sacrifice to it—to watch the self-inflicted sufferings of its worshipers, the ennui, the depression, the unlovely faces of ill-health, to observe the falsehood on which it is founded, and therefore the falsehood, the futility, the unbelief in God or Man which spring out of it—and to turn away, determined, as far as in him lies, to worship in that Dagon-house no longer. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Desirable mansions : a tract Description An account of the resource Edition: 3rd ed. Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Reprinted, with a few alterations, from Progress, June 1883. List of other works by author on p. 2. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Carpenter, Edward Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T395 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Desirable mansions : a tract), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Social change Socialism