"It shall be ours, not only to be king, but to
be employer, patron, landlord, educator. We will assign to the workman
his wages, just and ample and perennial: we will adjust production to
demand: we will be the restorers of agriculture: we will monopolise
the carrying-trade: we alone will sell whatever shall be sold: we will
wash the workman in public baths: his taste shall be elevated by our
statues and pictures, our theatres, our music-halls, and our churches;
we will gratify his curiosity with our news-agencies, feed his thought
with our popular philosophy, educate his children as our own in our
primary and secondary schools. Furthermore, we will provide the long
desiderated career open to talents. The stupid boy, though his father
was our Prime Minister, shall be made a cabin-boy, or a scavenger's
assistant, an awful example to young gentlemen who fail to pass the
Government examinations: while we will pick up, not the gutter child,
for there shall be no more children in gutters, but the son of the
woman at the mill, and testing him and assigning his career, first by
school examinations, and then by his official performances, we will
make him in time Poet Laureate or President of the Board of Trade,
according to the bent of his genius.
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