supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of
inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and
grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with
workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest and the
willingest our Earth ever had; these men are here; the work
they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant,
exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baleful fiat as
of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers,
ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it,
no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted
fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest
shape; but on the rich masterworkers too it falls; neither can
the rich master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape,
but all are like to be brought low with it, and made 'poor'
enough, in the money-sense or a far fataller one.

Of these successful skillful workers some two millions, it is now
counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door
relief' flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille
being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder
by a stronger.* They sit there, these many months now; their
hope of deliverance as yet small. In workhouses, pleasantly so
named, because work cannot be done in them. Twelve hundred
thousand workers in England alone; their cunning right-hand
lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful bosom; their hopes,
outlooks, share of this fair world, shut in by narrow walls.
They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchantment;
glad to be imprisoned and enchanted, that they may not perish
starved. The picturesque Tourist, in a sunny autumn day,