Human Physiology. 423 



should set an example to those who are trying to ape their 

 idleness, and show them that no work is undignified if it be 

 useful. I am not anxious to see noblemen engage in com- 

 merce until commerce becomes honest, and thereby noble; but 

 I would gladly see men, who now exercise their stalwart limbs 

 in rowing, shooting, hunting, and all the arduous and useless 

 labours of sport, turn their energies of mind and body to some- 

 thing which would benefit their fellow-men. In America, in 

 all the best days of the Republic, useful labour has been 

 honourable, as it was in the first centuries of ancient Rome, 

 and men were called from the plough-tail or work-bench to be 

 governors of states. In England, there will be no true work 

 until men and women of the highest rank are ready to engage 

 in it, and set a good example to those who are so ready to 

 imitate their follies and their vices. In an army, wherever the 

 officers will go, their men will follow. It will be the same in 

 the fields of industry. 



And how any one, nobleman or gentleman, can think it 

 noble or gentle to take money he has never earned for which 

 he has rendered no equivalent out of the labour and taxes of 

 the poor, who are in so many cases suffering for the necessaries 

 of life, is a matter of profound astonishment. Surely the time 

 must come, even in this world when justice will be done, and 

 it will be rendered to every man according to his works. 

 And when "the nobility and gentry" take their proper place 

 as active leaders in all useful work; when honourable men and 

 women make all avocations honourable, labour will become 

 honest as well as trade. How far it is now from being honest, 

 every person of any experience knows. 



The frauds of labour, and of many kinds of manufactures, 

 are as disgraceful as the speculations of commerce. We are 

 cheated in materials, cheated in time, cheated in work. Does 

 not the householder who sends for a plumber, or carpenter, or 

 mason to do repairs, feel the dread of robbery not the plunder 



