"But why not try such a scheme in England?"
"The expense is too great; the rates and taxes are too heavy, and the difficulties created by land-laws and lawyers are too great. Besides, there would always be the danger of the men breaking away in sudden fits of ill-humour and discontent, and getting back to their old bad habits and evil companionship. They must leave all the evils of the old world behind them and start clear. You will come with us, Buxton?"
"With all my heart," was the reply.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
THE FINAL RESOLVE.
The following letter was addressed to her _protege_ in Liverpool by Rose immediately after the consultation already described:
"MY DEAR BOY,
"Wentworth and I have formed a scheme for the future in which we hope you will unite.
"We propose to establish a co-operative self-supporting community on the other side of the Atlantic.
"Old England is played out. It may be that there is a new England to arise out of the ashes of the old, but it seems rather that-like Rome, and Athens, and Tyre, and India, and Babylon, and Corinth, and Carthage-its glory has pa.s.sed away. The democracy will rule the land, and that means the separation of Ireland and England, the ruin of the landlords and of the capitalists, who in their turn will be sacrificed to the popular demand for a theoretical right. A member of Parliament will simply have to be the mouthpiece of his const.i.tuents; he will be imposed on them, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, by an a.s.sembly of wealthy, ambitions men, prepared to do anything to retain their hold of power.
"Parliament or the State will have to interfere between fools and the results of their folly. The wretch who gets drunk and starves his wife and children will have to be taken under the care of the State.
The lazy loafer, who cannot and will not work, will have to be maintained by the community. There is to be no coercion and no compulsion, and everybody is to be allowed to drive to the devil in the way most convenient. Economic law is to be set aside to gratify the demands of the people who want to be known as patriots, and who will thus put into men"s heads ideas they would never have dreamed of. Probably a fierce Communism will ravage the land, and by destroying the wealthy increase tenfold the hardships of the poor.
It is because England has been the reverse of all this-because it has been the land of men who have preferred to do their duty rather than talk of their rights; who have gained with the strong arm and the manly heart victory over the earth and all it holds, that England has been the home of as n.o.ble a race-mixed, as it may be, of Celts and Saxons-as ever sailed the ocean or ploughed the land.
"What has England now to fall back on but a rapidly-exhausting coal supply, an overwhelming debt, establishments-civil, and naval, and military-preposterous in good times, wicked now when our trade is declining everywhere, and the number daily increases of people who have no work to do? Shutting their eyes to all the dangers of the situation, we see the State split up into two parties-the one in possession of power clinging to it at whatever cost of principle or consistency, and the outs equally ready to pay the same price to get in.
"And then we have a Church which is a sort of half-way house to Rome, and a conventional form of worship by thousands who call themselves Christians, but are really heathen at heart; and hence a growing cla.s.s of men who delight to call themselves Atheists, and who fancy that they are more enlightened than other men because they refuse to bow the knee to a supreme Being. We are weary of all this. On the other side of the Rocky Mountains, where the Pacific, with its warm wind, sweeps up the slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, we have secured a large tract of country, with mines, and fertile valleys, and rivers abounding with fish. The region is romantic. The country is fertile, and it is far from the Old World, with its sin, its sorrow, its difficulty of living, and its corroding care. There, freed from the icy conventionalisms of the Old World, we shall lead happy and useful lives-all engaged in remunerative labour that shall leave abundant time for the cultivation of the mental powers, and where none will be exhausted by overwork, either of body or of mind.
And we hope you will join our party."
THE END.