A Joy For Ever; (And Its Price in the Market) | Page 5

in her pretty table-cloth, and her glittering shelves, no less
than in her well-dressed dish, and her full storeroom; the care in her
countenance will alternate with gaiety, and though you will reverence
her in her seriousness, you will know her best by her smile.
11. Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address you, on
this and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the subject of that economy
which relates rather to the garden than the farm-yard. I shall ask you to
consider with me the kind of laws by which we shall best distribute the
beds of our national garden, and raise in it the sweetest succession of
trees pleasant to the sight, and (in no forbidden sense) to be desired to
make us wise. But, before proceeding to open this specialty of our
subject, let me pause for a few moments to plead with you for the
acceptance of that principle of government or authority which must be
at the root of all economy, whether for use or for pleasure. I said, a few
minutes ago, that a nation's labour, well applied, was amply sufficient
to provide its whole population with good food, comfortable clothing,
and pleasant luxury. But the good, instant, and constant application is
everything. We must not, when our strong hands are thrown out of
work, look wildly about for want of something to do with them. If ever
we feel that want, it is a sign that all our household is out of order.
Fancy a farmer's wife, to whom one or two of her servants should come
at twelve o'clock at noon, crying that they had got nothing to do; that
they did not know what to do next: and fancy still farther, the said
farmer's wife looking hopelessly about her rooms and yard, they being
all the while considerably in disorder, not knowing where to set the
spare handmaidens to work, and at last complaining bitterly that she
had been obliged to give them their dinner for nothing. That's the type
of the kind of political economy we practise too often in England.
Would you not at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing
of her duties? and would you not be certain, if the household were
rightly managed, the mistress would be only too glad at any moment to
have the help of any number of spare hands; that she would know in an
instant what to set them to;--in an instant what part of to-morrow's
work might be most serviceably forwarded, what part of next month's
work most wisely provided for, or what new task of some profitable

kind undertaken; and when the evening came, and she dismissed her
servants to their recreation or their rest, or gathered them to the reading
round the work-table, under the eaves in the sunset, would you not be
sure to find that none of them had been overtasked by her, just because
none had been left idle; that everything had been accomplished because
all had been employed; that the kindness of the mistress had aided her
presence of mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to the weak,
and the formidable to the strong; and that as none had been
dishonoured by inactivity, so none had been broken by toil?
12. Now, the precise counterpart of such a household would be seen in
a nation in which political economy was rightly understood. You
complain of the difficulty of finding work for your men. Depend upon
it, the real difficulty rather is to find men for your work. The serious
question for you is not how many you have to feed, but how much you
have to do; it is our inactivity, not our hunger, that ruins us: let us never
fear that our servants should have a good appetite--our wealth is in their
strength, not in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, and
see what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbourless
cliffs--you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of refuge; the
unclean pestilence ravins in your streets--you have to bring the full
stream from the hills, and to send the free winds through the
thoroughfare; the famine blanches your lips and eats away your
flesh--you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morass
give forth instead of engulfing, and to wring the honey and oil out of
the rock. These things, and thousands such, we have to do, and shall
have to do constantly, on this great farm of ours; for do not suppose
that it is anything else than that. Precisely the same laws of economy
which apply to the cultivation of a farm or an estate, apply to the