was. But let us rather turn for a moment to the prose of a man who, also
reared in hardship's school, had learnt to succour misery. Speaking at
the time when Protection was biting and clawing the ground in the last
death-struggle, as all men but the landlords hoped, Carlyle asked this
question of the people:

"From much loud controversy, and Corn-law debating, there
rises, loud though inarticulate, once more in these years, this
very question among others, Who made the Land of England?
Who made it, this respectable English Land, wheat-growing,
metalliferous, carboniferous, which will let readily, hand over
hand, for seventy millions or upwards, as it here lies: who did
make it? 'We,' answer the much-consuming Aristocracy;
'We!' as they ride in, moist with the sweat of Melton Mowbray:
'It is we that made it, or are the heirs, assigns and representatives
of those who did!'--My brothers, You? Everlasting honour
to you, then; and Corn-laws many as you will, till your own
deep stomachs cry Enough, or some voice of Human pity for
our famine bids you Hold!"

So our fathers have told us, and we have forgotten. It is all very long
ago, and the Protectionist says that times have changed. Certainly times
have changed, and it was deliverance from Protection that changed them
most. But if landowners have changed, if they are now more alien from
the people, and richer from other sources than land, we have no reason
to suppose them less greedy or more pitiful; nor can a nation live on
the off-chance of pity. Seventy years ago the net encompassed the land.
We have seen how the people suffered under its entanglement. In the
sight of all, landowners and speculators are now trying to spread that
net again. Are we to suppose the English people have not the hereditary