"There's truth in what you say, Master Barney," observed the Lauréat; "the stones went merrily into the pond, but the foolish frogs could not fish out the fun. I am no advocate for the philosophy of expediency."
"Surely, Mr. Bosky, you would never think of putting a stop to _improvement!_"
"My good friends, I would not have man become the victim of his ingenuity--a mechanical suicide! Where brass and iron, hot water and cold, can be made to mitigate the wear and tear of his thews and sinews, let them be adopted as auxiliaries, not as principals. I am no political economist. I despise the muddle-headed dreamers, and their unfeeling crudities. But for them the heart of England would have remained uncorrupted and sound. * Trifle not with suffering. Impunity has its limit. A flint will show fire when you strike it.
* We quite agree with Mr. Bosky. Cant and utilitarianism have produced an insipid uniformity of character, a money- grubbing, care-worn monotony, that cry aloof to eccentricity and whim. Men are thinking of "stratagems and wars," the inevitable consequence of lots of logic, lack of amusement, and lean diet. No man is a traitor over turtle, or hatches plots with good store of capon and claret in his stomach. Had Cassius been a better feeder he had never conspired against Cæsar. Three meals a day, and supper at night, are four substantial reasons for not being disloyal, lank, or lachrymose.
"In this world ninety-nine persons out of one hundred must toil for their bread before they eat it; _ask leave_ to toil,--some philanthropists say, even before they hunger for it. I have therefore yet to learn how that which makes human labour a drug in the market can be called, an _improvement_. The stewardships of this world are vilely performed. What blessings would be conferred, what wrongs prevented, were it not for the neglect of opportunities and the prostitution of means. Is it our own merit that we have more? our neighbour's delinquency that he has less? The infant is born to luxury;--calculate his claims! Virtue draws its last sigh in a dungeon; Vice receives its tardy summons on a bed of down! The titled and the rich, the purse-proud nobodies, the noble nothings, occupy their vantage ground, not from any merit of their own; but from that lucky or unlucky chance which might have brought them into this breathing world with two heads on their shoulders instead of one! I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and practical malignity of man."