And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law, and see His work,
while I live.
II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its
faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the joy of its love.
And I will strive to love my neighbour as myself, and, even when I
cannot, will act as if I did.
III. I will labour, with such strength and opportunity as God gives
me, for my own daily bread; and all that my hand finds to do, I
will do with my might.
IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human being
for my gain or pleasure; nor hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human
being for my gain or pleasure; nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any
human being for my gain or pleasure.
V. I will not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, nor
destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort
all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty, upon the
earth.
VI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul daily into higher
powers of duty and happiness; not in rivalship or contention with
others, but for the help, delight, and honour of others, and for
the joy and peace of my own life.
VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faithfully; and the
orders of its monarch, and of all persons appointed to be in
authority under its monarch, so far as such laws or commands are
consistent with what I suppose to be the law of God; and when they
are not, or seem in anywise to need change, I will oppose them
loyally and deliberately, not with malicious, concealed, or
disorderly violence.
VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under the limits of the
same obedience, which I render to the laws of my country, and the
commands of its rulers, I will obey the laws of the Society called
of St. George, into which I am this day received; and the orders of
its masters, and of all persons appointed to be in authority under
its masters, so long as I remain a Companion, called of St. George.
I will not enter in the present letter on any notice of the terms of
this creed and vow; nor of the grounds which many persons whose help I
sincerely desire, may perceive for hesitation in signing it—further
definitions of its meaning will be given as occasion comes; nor shall I
ever ask any one to sign it whom I do not know to be capable of
understanding and holding it in the sense in which it is meant I
proceed at once to define more explicitly those laws of the Company of
St. George to which it refers, and which must, at least in their power,
be known before they can be vowed fealty to.
The object of the Society, it has been stated again and again, is to
buy land in England; and thereon to train into the healthiest and most
refined life possible, as many Englishmen, Englishwomen, and English
children, as the land we possess can maintain in comfort; to establish,
for them and their descendants, a national store of continually
augmenting wealth; and to organize the government of the persons, and
administration of the properties, under laws which shall be just to
all, and Secure in their inviolable foundation on the Law of God.
“To buy land,” I repeat, or beg it; but by no means to steal it, or
trespass on it, as I perceive the present holders of the most part of
it are too ready to do, finding any bits of road or common which they
can pilfer unobserved. Are they quite mad, then; and do they think the
monster mob, gaining every day in force and knowledge, will let their
park walls stand much longer, on those dishonest terms? Doubtful enough
their standing is, even on any terms!
But our St. George’s walls will be more securely founded, on this wise.
The rents of our lands, though they will be required from the tenantry
as strictly as those of any other estates, will differ from common
rents primarily in being lowered, instead of raised, in proportion to
every improvement made by the tenant; secondly, in that they will be
entirely used for the benefit of the tenantry themselves, or better
culture of the estates, no money being ever taken by the landlords
unless they earn it by their own personal labour.
For the benefit of the tenantry, I say; but by no means, always, for
benefit of which they can be immediately conscious. The rents of any
particular farmer will seldom be returned to him in work on his own
fields, or investment in undertakings which promote his interest. The
rents of a rich estate in one shire of England may be spent on a poor
one in another, or in the purchase of wild ground, anywhere, on which
years of labour must be sunk before it can yield return; or in
minerals, or Greek vases, for the parish school. Therefore with the use
made of the rents paid, the tenantry will have no practical concern
whatever; they will only recognise gradually that the use has been
wise, in finding the prices of all serviceable articles diminishing,
and all the terms and circumstances of their, lives indicative of
increased abundance. They will have no more right, or disposition, to
ask their landlord what he is doing with the rents, than they have now
to ask him how many race-horses he keeps—or how much he has lost on
them. But the difference between landlords who live in Piccadilly, and
spend their rents at Epsom and Ascot, and landlords who live on the
grounds they are lords of, and spend their rents in bettering it, will
not be long in manifesting itself to the simplest minded tenantry; nor,
I believe, to the outside and antagonist world.
Sundry questions lately asked me by intelligent correspondents as to
the intended relations of the tenantry to the Society, may best be
answered by saying simply what I shall do, if ever the collected wealth
of the Company enables me to buy an estate for it as large as I could
have bought for myself, if I had been a railroad contractor.
Of course I could not touch the terms of the existing leases. The only
immediate difference would be, the definitely serviceable application
of all the rents, as above stated. But as the leases fell in, I should
offer renewal of them to the farmers I liked, on the single condition
of their complying with the great vital law of the St. George’s
Company,—“no use of steam power, nor of any machines where arms will
serve;” allowing such reduction of rent as should fully compensate them
for any disadvantage or loss which they could prove they incurred under
these conditions. I should give strict orders for the preservation of
the existing timber; see that the streams were not wantonly polluted,
and interfere in nothing else.
Such farms as were thrown up by their tenants, rather than submit to
these conditions, I should be in no haste to re-let; but put land
agents on them to cultivate them for the Society in the best manner,
and sell their produce;—as soon as any well recommended tenant offered
for them, submitting to our laws, he should have them for fixed rent.
Thus I should give room for development of whatever personal faculty
and energy I could find, and set, if successful, more easily followed
example. Meantime my schools and museums, always small and instantly
serviceable, would be multiplying among the villages,—youth after youth
being instructed in the proper laws of justice, patriotism, and
domestic happiness;—those of the Companions who could reside on the
lands would, each on his own farm, establish entirely strict obedience
to the ultimate laws determined upon as necessary:—if these laws are
indeed, as I do not doubt but that sincere care can make them,
pleasantly tenable by honest humanity, [61] they will be gradually
accepted voluntarily by the free tenants; and the system is as certain
to extend itself, on all sides, once seen to be right, as the branches
of an oak sapling.
While, therefore, I am perfectly content, for a beginning, with our
acre of rocky land given us by Mrs. Talbot, and am so little impatient
for any increase that I have been quietly drawing ragged-robbin leaves
in Malham cove, instead of going to see another twenty acres promised
in Worcestershire,—I am yet thinking out my system on a scale which
shall be fit for wide European work. Of course the single Master of the
Company cannot manage all its concerns as it extends. He must have, for
his help, men holding the same relation to him which the Marshals of an
army do to its General;—bearing, that is to say, his own authority
where he is not present; and I believe no better name than ‘Marshal’
can be found for these. Beneath whom, there will again be the
landlords, resident each in his own district; under these, the land
agents, tenantry, tradesmen, and hired labourers, some of whom will be
Companions, others Retainers, and others free tenants: and outside all
this there will be of course an irregular cavalry, so to speak, of more
or less helpful friends, who, without sharing in the work, will be glad
to further it more or less, as they would any other benevolent
institution.
The law that a Companion shall derive no profit from his companionship
does not touch the results of his own work. A Companion farmer will
have the produce of his farm as much as a free tenant; but he will pay
no dividends to the Companions who are not farmers.
The landlords will in general be men of independent fortune, who,
having gifts and ingenuity, choose to devote such gifts to the service
of the Society; the first condition of their appointment to a lordship
will be that they can work as much better than their labourers at all
rural labour as a good knight was wont to be a better workman than his
soldiers in war. There is no rule of supremacy that can ever supersede
this eternal, natural, and divine one. Higher by the head, broader in
the shoulders, and heartier in the will, the lord of lands and lives
must for ever be, than those he rules; and must work daily at their
head, as Richard at the trenches of Acre.
And what am I, myself then, infirm and old, who take, or claim,
leadership even of these lords? God forbid that I should claim it; it
is thrust and compelled on me—utterly against my will, utterly to my
distress, utterly, in many things, to my shame. But I have found no
other man in England, none in Europe, ready to receive it,—or even
desiring to make himself capable of receiving it. Such as I am, to my
own amazement, I stand—so far as I can discern—alone in conviction, in
hope, and in resolution, in the wilderness of this modern world. Bred
in luxury, which I perceive to have been unjust to others, and
destructive to myself; vacillating, foolish, and miserably failing in
all my own conduct in life—and blown about hopelessly by storms of
passion—I, a man clothed in soft raiment,—I, a reed shaken with the
wind, have yet this Message to all men again entrusted to me: “Behold,
the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Whatsoever tree therefore
bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the
fire.”
This message, yet once more; and, more than message, the beginning of
the acts that must fulfil it. For, long since, I have said all that
needs to be said,—all that it was my proper charge and duty to say. In
the one volume of ‘Sesame and Lilies’—nay, in the last forty pages of
its central address to Englishwomen—everything is told that I know of
vital truth, everything urged that I see to be needful of vital
act;—but no creature answers me with any faith or any deed. They read
the words, and say they are pretty, and go on in their own ways. And
the day has come for me therefore to cease speaking, and begin doing,
as best I may; though I know not whether shall prosper, either this or
that.
And truly to all wholesome deed here in England, the chances of
prosperity are few, and the distinctness of adversity only conquerable
by fixed imagination and exhaustless patience—‘Adversis rerum
immersabilis undis.’ The wisest men join with the fools, and the best
men with the villains, to prevent, if they may, any good thing being
done permanently—nay, to provoke and applaud the doing of consistently
evil things permanently. To establish a national debt, and in the most
legal terms—how easy! To establish a national store, under any legal or
moral conditions of perpetuity—how difficult! Every one calls me mad
for so much as hoping to do so. ‘This looks like a charity, this
educating of peasants,’ said the good lawyer, who drew up the already
published conditional form of association. ‘You must not establish a
fund for charity; it is sure to lead to all sorts of abuses, and get
into wrong hands.’
Well, yes—it in merely human probability may. I do verily perceive and
admit, in convinced sorrow, that I live in the midst of a nation of
thieves and murderers; [62] that everybody around me is trying to rob
everybody else; and that, not bravely and strongly, but in the most
cowardly and loathsome ways of lying trade; that ‘Englishman’ is now
merely another word for black-leg and swindler; and English honour and
courtesy changed to the sneaking and the smiles of a whipped pedlar, an
inarticulate Autolycus, with a steam hurdy-gurdy instead of a voice. Be
this all so; be it so to the heart’s content—or liver and gall’s
content—of every modern economist and philosopher. I yet do verily
trust that out of this festering mass of scum of the earth, and
miserable coagulation of frog-spawn soaked in ditch-water, I can here
and there pluck up some drowned honour by the locks, and leave written
orders for wholesome deed, and collected monies for the doing thereof,
which will be obeyed and guarded after I am gone; and will by no means
fall into the power of the mendicant tribe who, too cowardly and
heartless to beg from the face of the living, steal the alms of the
dead, and unite the apparently inconsistent characters of beggar and
thief, seasoning the compound with sacrilege.
Little by little, if my life is spared to me, therefore, (and if I die,
there will I doubt not be raised up some one else in my room)—little by
little, I or they will get monies and lands together; handful gleaned
after handful; field joined to field, and landmarks set which no man
shall dare hereafter remove. And over those fields of ours the winds of
Heaven shall be pure; and upon them, the work of men shall be done in
honour and truth.
In such vague promise, I have for the most part hitherto spoken, not
because my own plans were unfixed, but because I knew they would only
be mocked at, until by some years of persistence the scheme had run the
course of the public talk, and until I had publicly challenged the
denial of its principles in their abstract statement, long enough to
show them to be invincible. Of these abstract principles, the
fifteenth, sixteenth, twentieth, twenty-second and twenty-third letters
in ‘Time and Tide,’ express all that is needful; only, in the years
that have passed since they were written, the ‘difficulties’ stated in
the seventeenth chapter have been under constant review by me; and of
the ways in which I mean to deal with them it is now time to speak.
Let us understand then, in the outset, the moral difference between a
national debt and a national store.
A national debt, like any other, may be honestly incurred in case of
need, and honestly paid in due time. But if a man should be ashamed to
borrow, much more should a people; and if a father holds it his honour
to provide for his children, and would be ashamed to borrow from them,
and leave, with his blessing, his note of hand, for his grandchildren
to pay, much more should a nation be ashamed to borrow, in any case, or
in any manner; and if it borrow at all, it is at least in honour bound
to borrow from living men, and not indebt itself to its own unborn
brats. If it can’t provide for them, at least let it not send their
cradles to the pawnbroker, and pick the pockets of their first
breeches.
A national debt, then, is a foul disgrace, at the best. But it is, as
now constituted, also a foul crime. National debts paying interest are
simply the purchase, by the rich, of power to tax the poor. Read
carefully the analysis given of them above, Letter VIII., p. 7.
The financial operations of the St. George’s Company will be the direct
reverse of these hitherto approved arrangements. They will consist in
the accumulation of national wealth and store, and therefore in
distribution to the poor, instead of taxation of them; and the fathers
will provide for, and nobly endow, not steal from, their children and
children’s children.
My readers, however, will even yet, I am well aware, however often I
have reiterated the statement to them, be unable to grasp the idea of a
national store, as an existing possession. They can conceive nothing
but a debt;—nay, there are many of them who have a confused notion that
a debt is a store!
The store of the St. George’s Company, then, is to be primarily of
food; next, of materials for clothing and covert; next, of books and
works of art,—food, clothes, books, and works of art being all good,
and every poisonous condition of any of them destroyed. The food will
not be purveyed by the Borgia, nor the clothing dyed by Deianira, nor
the Scriptures written under dictation of the Devil instead of God.
The most simply measurable part of the store of food and clothing will
be the basis of the currency, which will be thus constituted.
The standard of value will be a given weight or measure of grain, wine,
wool, silk, flax, wood, and marble; all answered for by the government
as of fine and pure quality, variable only within narrow limits.
The grain will be either wheat, oats, barley, rice, or maize; the wine
of pure vintage, and not less than ten years old; [63] the wool, silk,
and flax of such standard as can be secured in constancy; the wood,
seasoned oak and pine; and for fuel in log and faggot, with finest wood
and marble for sculpture. The penny’s worth, florin’s worth, ducat’s
worth, and hundred ducats’ worth of each of these articles will be a
given weight or measure of them, (the penny roll of our present
breakfast table furnishing some notion of what, practically, the grain
standard will become.) Into the question of equivalent value I do not
enter here; it will be at once determined practically as soon as the
system is in work. Of these articles the government will always have in
its possession as much as may meet the entire demand of its currency in
circulation. That is to say, when it has a million in circulation, the
million’s worth of solid property must be in its storehouses: as much
more as it can gather, of course; but never less. So that, not only,
for his penny, florin, ducat, or hundred-ducat note, a man may always
be certain of having his pound, or ton, or pint, or cask, of the thing
he chooses to ask for, from the government storehouses, but if the
holders of the million of currency came in one day to ask for their
money’s worth, it would be found ready for them in one or other form of
those substantial articles. Consequently, the sum of the circulating
currency being known, the minimum quantity of store will be known. The
sum of the entire currency, in and out of circulation, will be given
annually on every note issued (no issues of currency being made but on
the first day of the year), and in each district, every morning the
quantities of the currency in and out of circulation in that district
will be placarded at the doors of the government district bank.
The metallic currency will be of absolutely pure gold and silver, and
of those metals only; the ducat and half-ducat in gold, the florin,
penny, halfpenny, and one-fifth of penny in silver; the smaller coins
being beat thin and pierced, the halfpenny with two, the one-fifth of
penny with five, apertures. [64] I believe this double-centime will be
as fine a divisor as I shall need. The florin will be worth tenpence;
the ducat, twenty florins.
The weight of the ducat will be a little greater than that of the
standard English sovereign, and, being in absolutely pure gold, it will
be worth at least five-and-twenty shillings of our present coinage. On
one of its sides it will bear the figure of the archangel Michael; on
the reverse, a branch of Alpine rose; above the rose-branch, the words
‘Sit splendour’; [65] above the Michael, ‘Fiat voluntas’; under the
rose-branch, ‘sicut in cœlo’; under the Michael, ‘et in terrâ,’ with
the year of the coinage: and round the edge of the coin, ‘Domini.’
The half-ducat will bear the same stamp, except that while on the ducat
the St. Michael will be represented standing on the dragon, on the
half-ducat he will be simply armed, and bearing St. George’s shield.
On the florin, the St. George’s shield only; the Alpine rose on all
three.
On the penny, St. George’s shield on one side, and the English daisy on
the other, without inscription. The pierced fractional coins will only
bear a chased wreathen fillet, with the required apertures in its
interstices.
There will be considerable loss by wear on a coinage of this pure
metal; but nothing is so materially conducive to the honour of a state
in all financial function as the purity of its coinage; and the loss
will never, on the whole currency, equal annually the tenth part of the
value of the gunpowder spent at present in salutes or fireworks; and,
if a nation can afford to pay for loyal noise and fancies in fire, it
may also, and much more rationally, for loyal truth and beauty in its
circulating signs of wealth. Nor do I doubt that a currency thus
constituted will gradually enter into European commerce, and become
everywhere recognised and exemplary.
Supposing any Continental extension of the Company itself took place,
its coinage would remain the same for the ducat, but the shield of the
State or Province would be substituted for St. George’s on the minor
coins.
There will be no ultimate difficulty in obtaining the bullion necessary
for this coinage, for the State will have no use for the precious
metals, except for its currency or its art. An Englishman, as he is at
present educated, takes pride in eating out of a silver plate, and in
helping out of a silver tureen the richest swindlers he can ask to
dinner. The Companions of St. George may drink out of pewter, and eat
off delft, but they will have no knaves for guests, though often
beggars; and they will be always perfectly well able to afford to buy
five or ten pounds’ worth of gold and silver for their pocket change;
and even think it no overwhelming fiscal calamity if as much even as
ten shillings should be actually lost in the year, by the wear of it;
seeing that the wear of their dinner napkins will be considerably
greater in the same time. I suppose that ten pounds’ worth of bullion
for the head of each family will amply supply the necessary quantity
for circulation; but if it should be found convenient to have
fifteen—twenty—or fifty pounds in such form, the national store will
assuredly in time accumulate to such desirable level. But it will
always be a matter of absolute financial indifference, what part of the
currency is in gold and what in paper; its power being simply that of a
government receipt for goods received, giving claim to their return on
demand. The holder of the receipt may have it, if he likes, written on
gold instead of paper, provided he bring the gold for it to be written
on; but he may no more have a bar of gold made into money than a roll
of foolscap, unless he brings the goods for which the currency is the
receipt. And it will therefore, by St. George’s law, be as much forgery
to imitate the national coin in gold, as in paper.
Next to this store, which is the basis of its currency, the government
will attend to the increase of store of animal food—not mummy food, in
tins, but living, on land and sea; keeping under strictest overseership
its breeders of cattle, and fishermen, and having always at its command
such supply of animal food as may enable it to secure absolute
consistency of price in the main markets. In cases when, by any disease
or accident, the supply of any given animal food becomes difficult, its
price will not be raised, but its sale stopped. There can be no evasion
of such prohibition, because every tradesman in food will be merely the
salaried servant of the Company, and there will be no temptation to it,
because his salary will be the same, whether he sells or not. Of all
articles of general consumption, the government will furnish its own
priced standard; any man will be allowed to sell what he can produce
above that standard, at what price he can get for it; but all goods
below the government standard will be marked and priced as of such
inferior quality;—and all bad food, cloth, or other article of service,
destroyed. And the supervision will be rendered simple by the fewness
of the articles permitted to be sold at all; for the dress being in all
classes as determined as the heraldry of coronets, and for the most
part also rigorously simple, and all luxurious living disgraceful, the
entire means of domestic life will be within easy definition.
Of course the idea of regulating dress generally will be looked upon by
the existing British public as ridiculous. But it has become ridiculous
because masters and mistresses attempt it solely for their own pride.
Even with that entirely selfish end, the natural instinct of human
creatures for obedience, when in any wholesome relations with their
superiors, has enabled the masters to powder their coachmen’s wigs, and
polish their footmen’s legs with silk stockings; and the mistresses to
limit their lady’s maids, when in attendance, to certain styles of cap.
Now as the dress regulations of the St. George’s Company will be quite
as much for the pride of the maid as the mistress, and of the man as
the master, I have no fear but they will be found acceptable, and
require no strictness of enforcement. The children of peasants, though
able to maintain their own families, will be required to be as clean as
if they were charity-boys or girls; nobody will be allowed to wear the
cast clothes of other people, to sell or pawn their own, or to appear
on duty, agricultural or whatever other it may be, in rags, any more
than the Horse Guards or the Queen’s dairy-maids are now; also on
certain occasions, and within such limits as are needful for good
fellowship, they will be urged to as much various splendour as they can
contrive. The wealth of the peasant women will be chiefly in hereditary
golden ornaments of the finest workmanship; and in jewellery of uncut
gems—agates only, or other stones of magnitude, being allowed to be
cut, and gems of large size, which are worth the pains, for their
beauty; but these will be chiefly used in decorative architecture or
furniture, not in dress. The dress of the officers of the Company will
be on all occasions plainer than that of its peasants; but hereditary
nobles will retain all the insignia of their rank, the one only
condition of change required on their entering the St. George’s Company
being the use of uncut jewels, and therefore—seldom of diamonds. [66]
The next main staple of the Company’s store will be its literature.
A chosen series of classical books will be placed in every village
library, in number of copies enough to supply all readers; these
classics will be perfectly printed and perfectly bound, and all in one
size of volume, unless where engravings need larger space: besides
these village libraries, there will be a museum in every district,
containing all good ancient books obtainable: gradually, as the design
expands itself, and as time passes on, absorbing, by gift, or purchase,
the contents of private libraries, and connecting themselves with
similarly expanding museums of natural history. In all schools, the
books necessary for their work will be given to the pupils; and one of
their earliest lessons will be the keeping of them clean and orderly.
By ordering of Fors, I went only this last month to see the school in
which Wordsworth was educated. It remains, as it was then, a school for
peasant lads only; and the doors of its little library, therefore, hang
loose on their decayed hinges; and one side of the schoolroom is
utterly dark—the window on that side having been long ago walled up,
either ‘because of the window tax, or perhaps it had got broken,’
suggested the guardian of the place.
Now it is true that this state of things cannot last long; but the cure
will be worse than the disease. A fit of reactionary vanity and folly
is sure to seize the village authorities; that old schoolroom, with its
sacred associations, will be swept from the hillside, and a grand piece
of Birmingham Gothic put up, with a master from Kensington, and
enforced weekly competitive examination in Sanscrit, and the Binomial
Theorem.
All that the school wants is, hinges to its library doors as good as
every shop in the street has to its shutters; the window knocked
through again where it was originally; the books whose bindings are
worn out, rebound, and a few given (in addition to those on the
subjects of arithmetic and grammar), which the boys may rather ask
leave to read, than take opportunity to throw into corners.
But the ten or twenty pounds needed for this simple reformation could,
I suppose, at present, by no persuasion nor argument be extracted from
the united pockets of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Meantime,
while the library doors flap useless on their hinges, the old country
churchyard is grim with parallelograms of iron palisade, enforced
partly to get some sacred market for the wares of the rich ironmongers
who are buying up the country; and partly to protect their valuable
carcases in their purtrefying pride. Of such iron stores the men of St.
George’s Company, dead, will need none, and living, permit none. But
they will strictly enforce the proper complement of hinges to their
school-library doors.
The resuscitation of the, at present extinct, art of writing being
insisted upon in the school exercises of the higher classes, the
libraries will be gradually enriched with manuscripts of extreme
preciousness. A well-written book is as much pleasanter and more
beautiful than a printed one as a picture is than an engraving; and
there are many forms of the art of illumination which were only in
their infancy at the time when the wooden blocks of Germany abolished
the art of scripture, and of which the revival will be a necessary
result of a proper study of natural history.
In next Fors, I shall occupy myself wholly with the subject of our Art
education and property; and in that for December, I hope to publish the
legal form of our constitution revised and complete. The terminal
clauses respecting the Companions’ right of possession in the lands
will be found modified, or in great part omitted, in the recast deed;
but I am neither careful nor fearful respecting the terms of this
instrument, which is to be regarded merely as a mechanical means of
presently getting to work and having land legally secured to us. The
ultimate success or failure of the design will not in the least depend
on the terms of our constitution, but on the quantity of living honesty
and pity which can be found, to be constituted. If there is not
material enough out of which to choose Companions, or energy enough in
the Companions chosen to fill the chain-mail of all terms and forms
with living power, the scheme will be choked by its first practical
difficulties; and it matters little what becomes of the very small
property its promoters are ever likely to handle. If, on the contrary,
as I believe, there be yet honesty and sense enough left in England to
nourish the effort, from its narrow source there will soon develop
itself a vast Policy, of which neither I nor any one else can foresee
the issue, far less verbally or legally limit it; but in which,
broadly, by the carrying out of the primally accepted laws of Obedience
and Economy, the Master and Marshalls will become the Ministry of the
State, answerable for the employment of its revenues, for its relations
with external powers, and for such change of its laws as from time to
time may be found needful: the Landlords will be the resident
administrators of its lands, and immediate directors of all labour,—its
captains in war, and magistrates in peace: the tenants will constitute
its agricultural and military force, having such domestic and
acquisitive independence as may be consistent with patriotic and kindly
fellowship: and the artists, schoolmen, tradesmen, and inferior
labourers, will form a body of honourably paid retainers, undisturbed
in their duty by any chance or care relating to their means of
subsistence.