affairs, now _leads_: the Duke's Bailiff _leads_, what little
leading is required for getting in the rents; and the Duke merely
rides in the state-coach. It is everywhere so: and now at last
we see a world all rushing towards strange consummations, because
it is and has long been so!


I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in England
at all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and the
Revolutionary Millenniums preached by the French Prophets in this
age: but there are many movements here too which tend inevitably
in the like direction; and good men, who would stand aghast at
Red Republic and its adjuncts, seem to me travelling at full
speed towards that or a similar goal! Certainly the notion
everywhere prevails among us too, and preaches itself abroad in
every dialect, uncontradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, That
the grand panacea for social woes is what we call
"enfranchisement," "emancipation;" or, translated into practical
language, the cutting asunder of human relations, wherever they
are found grievous, as is like to be pretty universally the case
at the rate we have been going for some generations past. Let us
all be "free" of one another; we shall then be happy. Free,
without bond or connection except that of cash-payment; fair
day's wages for the fair day's work; bargained for by voluntary
contract, and law of supply-and-demand: this is thought to be
the true solution of all difficulties and injustices that have
occurred between man and man.

To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no
method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become