Alas, alas! The Gospels
of Political Economy, of _Laissez-faire,_ No-Government, Paradise
to all comers, and so many fatal Gospels,--generally, one may
say, all the Gospels of this blessed "New Era,"--will first have
to be tried, and found wanting. With a quantity of written and
uttered nonsense, and of suffered and inflicted misery, which one
sinks fairly dumb to estimate! A kind of comfort it is, however,
to see that "Imposture" _has_ fallen openly "bankrupt," here as
everywhere else in our old world; that no dexterity of human
tinkering, with all the Parliamentary Eloquence and Elective
Franchises in nature, will ever set it on its feet again, to go
many yards more; but that _its_ goings and currencies in this
Earth have as good as ceased for ever and ever! God is great;
all Lies do now, as from the first, travel incessantly towards
Chaos, and there at length lodge! In some parts of Ireland (the
Western "insolvent Unions," some twenty-seven of them in all),
within a trifle of _one half_ of the whole population are on
Poor-Law rations (furnished by the British Government, L1,100 a
week furnished here, L1,300 there, L800 there); the houses stand
roofless, the lands unstocked, uncultivated, the landlords hidden
from bailiffs, living sometimes "on the hares of their domain":
such a state of things was never witnessed under this sky before;
and, one would humbly expect, cannot last long!--What is to be
done? asks every one; incapable of _hearing_ any answer, were
there even one ready for imparting to him.
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