My workmen fellow-passengers were as
impatient and dull of hearing on the second of these points as any
member of Parliament; but they had some glimmerings of the first.
They would not hear of improvement on their part, but wished the
world made over again in a crack, so that they might remain
improvident and idle and debauched, and yet enjoy the comfort and
respect that should accompany the opposite virtues; and it was in
this expectation, as far as I could see, that many of them were now
on their way to America. But on the point of money they saw clearly
enough that inland politics, so far as they were concerned, were
reducible to the question of annual income; a question which should
long ago have been settled by a revolution, they did not know how,
and which they were now about to settle for themselves, once more
they knew not how, by crossing the Atlantic in a steamship of
considerable tonnage.
And yet it has been amply shown them that the second or income
question is in itself nothing, and may as well be left undecided, if
there be no wisdom and virtue to profit by the change. It is not by
a man's purse, but by his character that he is rich or poor.
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