Harriet Martineau

“ I have no complaint to make of my neighbours, I am sure. I should be a very ungrateful man, if I fancied I had. I am fully aware of the general disposition of men to venerate science, and to afford large aid to those who pursue it, on a principle of faith in its results. My belief in this is not at all shaken by what befel me in England; but, as I have appeared here accidentally,—a philosopher suddenly lighting in an infant community instead of having grown up out of it, it was fair to doubt the light in which I am regarded. ”

“ But, do you not find it pleasanter to go to worship, as we went this morning, through green pastures and by still waters, where human industry made its appeals to us in eloquent silence, and men’s dwellings bore entire the aspect of sabbath repose, than to pass through paved streets, with a horizon of brick-walls, and tokens on every side, not only of week day labour, but of struggle for subsistence, and subservience for bread? ”

“ The one was the bondman’s duty then; and the other is the citizen’s duty now; but the one duty is destined to become as obsolete as the other.—What glory in that day, to reverse the order of expenditure! Education, Public Works, Government and Legislation, Law and Justice, Diplomacy, Defence, Dignity of the Sovereign. When this time shall come, no one can conjecture; but that we shall not always have to pay eight millions a year for our defence is certain; if the voice of a wise man,— (which is always the voice of an awakening multitude,) —say true. ”

“ The most idly luxurious about the court preferred entertainments which had a little more meaning in them,—dramatic spectacles, pictures, music, and fine buildings and gardens. War is also a favourite excitement in the middle age of refinement; and the best part of this day’s entertainments, next to the music, was the peals of ordnance both from the vessels and the shore, which might prettily remind the gallants, amidst their mirth and their soft flirtations, of the cannonading that was going on over the sea. ”

“ How long will the two parties go on disputing whether luxury be a virtue or a crime?"
“Till they cease to float themselves on the surface of morals on the support of old maxims of morality; till they look with their own eyes into the evidence of circumstance, and learn to make an induction for themselves. They will see that each side of the question has its right and its wrong; that there is no harm, but much good in enjoyment, regarded by itself; and that there is no good, but much harm in causing toil which tends to the extinction of enjoyment.” ”

“ Who but he opens the eyes of the blind, and unstops the ears of the deaf, and sets the lame on his feet, and strengthens together the drooping heart and the feeble knees,—by setting before the one the radiant frame of society in all its fitness, and waking up for another the voices of human companionship, and compacting the powers of the weak with those of the strong, and cheering all by warding off injury from without, and making restraint easy where perchance it may gall any of those who are within? Sacred is the power of the ruler as a trust ”

“ It seems too hard that the richest man among us should at the same time keep away new settlers by holding more land than he can cultivate, waste his capital, instead of putting it out to those who would employ it for his and the common good, and praise himself mightily for his liberal expenditure, holding the entire community obliged to him for it, every time he buys a new luxury which will yield no good beyond his own selfish pleasure. ”

“ It was a day of disappointments to Henry. Not only were his Commons anything but benevolently disposed towards furnishing the benevolence required, but the young nun would not come to be married to the friar. The gallants who had been sent for her now appeared before the King with fear and trembling, bearing sad tidings of the sturdiness of female self-will. They had traced the maiden to the house of her father, one Richard Read, and had endeavoured to force her away with them, notwithstanding her own resistance, and her mother’s and sister’s prayers and tears. ”

“ Poor as the Dissenting clergy may be, as a body, we hear of no such conflicts in their lot. The poor spirit-broken clergyman bearing, undeserved by him, the opprobrium belonging to his church, seeing his gentle wife washing his floor, or striving to patch up once more the girl’s frock and the boy’s coat; while they, poor children, peep in at the door of the labourer’s smoky cabin, and rush in at the first invitation to take a sup of milk or a potatoe! Scraps of the classics, descriptive of poverty, will run in his head, instead of gospel consolations of poverty ”

“ With the progress of science, the diffusion of science becomes necessary. The greater the power of the people to injure or rebel, the more necessary it is to teach them to be above injuring and rebelling. The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written in so small a character that his people could not read them, and then punished offenders under pretence that his laws were exhibited, was no more unjust than we are while we transport and hang our neighbours for deeds of folly and malice, while we still withhold from them the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ”

“ There was no inducement to extravagance, and no room for imprudence, and no encouragement to idleness. There was no scope for these vices among the working-class of Briery Creek, and dancing was to them (what it would be in many another place, if permitted) an innocent enjoyment, a preventive of much solitary self-indulgence, and a sweetener of many tempers. In a society whose great danger was the growth of a binding spirit of worldliness, social mirth was an antidote which no moralist would condemn, and which he would not dare to despise. ”

“ If the administration of penal justice be a grievous burden upon the people, it must be lightened by a practical respect to that higher justice which commands that the interests of all, the noble and the mean, the educated and the ignorant, be of equal importance in the regards of the administration; so that government shall as earnestly protest against the slaughter of the poor man’s dog for the sake of the rich man’s sport, as the prophet of God against the sacrifice of the poor man’s ewe-lamb for the rich man’s feast. ”

“ Their throne moves, like an idol’s car, over the bones of those who have worshipped or defied their state; and they have fiends to act as mummers in their pageants, and defiled armour for their masques, and much dolorous howling in the place of a band of minstrels. In such days the people pay no tax, because the monarch has only to stretch forth his hand and take. It is a better age when the mummers are really merry, and minstrels make music that gladdens the heart like wine ”

“ A perpetual stimulus seems to me to be provided for by labour being more and more set at liberty, since all the fruits of labour constitute at once the demand and the supply. But the desires and tastes which have grown up under a superabundance of labour and a dearth of science are not those which may be looked for when new science (which is as much the effect as the cause of new methods of production) shall have opened fresh worlds to human tastes. The spread of luxury, whether it be pronounced a good or an evil, is, I conceive, of limited duration. ”

“ Then comes the curate, eager to undertake more than man can do for as little as man can live for;—to use his intellectual tools, framed with care, and polished with long toil, and needing, in their application, all the power of a philosopher with all the zeal of a saint,—for less than is given to the artizan who spends his life in the performance of one manual act, or the clerk, whose whole soul lies in one process of computation! This poor curate, heart-sick through long waiting, may find employment according to his capacities, and above them ”

“ A passing traveller, looking down upon Briery Creek from the neighbouring ridge, might perhaps ask the name of the social benefactor who had ornamented the district with yon splendid mansion, presented the village with a place of worship, and the shell, at least, of a parsonage; had reclaimed those green lawns from the wild prairie, and cleared the woodland in the rear so as to leave, conspicuous in beauty, clumps of the noblest forest trees. Such a stranger ought not to use the term “benefactor” till he knew whence came the means by which all this work was wrought. ”

“ Their pleasure was instantly visible when, their attention being attracted by a shout from the throng of settlers, they perceived a substantial bridge, finished except the gravelling, overhanging the stream through which they had expected to be compelled to wade. They received with hearty good-will their commander’s directions to pay toll of their labour for their passage. Never was a public work finished in a more joyous style. ”

“ Sneyd, “every thing has so conduced to sober the minds of our neighbours, that there has been little room yet for frivolity among us. The circumstances of hardship, of one kind or another, that led us all from our old homes were very serious; and it is a serious matter to quit country and family and friends; and the first casting about for subsistence in a new land is enough to bring thought into the wildest brain; and now, when we have gathered many comforts about us, and can thank Providence with full hearts, we are not at liberty for idleness and levity. ”

“ SATURDAY MORNING. The settlers at Briery Creek followed the old custom of the mother country, of holding their market on a Saturday. Saturday was an anxious day to some, a joyous day to others, and a busy day to all. Many a mother bent her steps to the market-house, doubting whether she should be able to meet with the delicate food she desired for her baby just weaned, or for her invalid husband, getting up from the fever, and following her cookery with eager eyes. ”

“ One may bear even the debt, for a short space, with patience, while blessed with the sober certainty that the true instrument of rectification,—the responsibility of rulers to the ruled, is at length actually in our hands. One might almost wish long life to the sinecure pensioners, and be courteous about the three millions and a half consumed in tax collecting, if one rested in a comparison of the present with the past. But there is enough before one’s eyes to remind one how much remains to be done before the nation shall receive full justice at the hands of its guardians. ”

“ If, in respect of our household furniture, equal purposes of convenience are found to be answered by a smaller variety of articles, the industry which is thus released will be free to turn to the fine arts,—to the multiplication of objects which embody truth and set forth beauty,—objects which cannot be too extensively multiplied. If our ladies, at the same time, discover that equal grace and more convenience are attained by a simpler costume, a more than classical simplicity will prevail, and the toil of operatives will be transferred to some higher species of production. ”

“ Travelling alone is the best pastime, after all. I must tie up these newspapers. It is a wonder they have not been claimed for the Blue Lion yet.
My wife would say this is just the light for the Abbey; but she has said so of every light, from the broadest noon sunshine to the glimmer of the slenderest crescent at midnight. Long may the Abbey stand, quiet amidst the bustle of moving life, a monitor speaking eloquently of the past, and breathing low prophecies of the future! ”

“ I have no doubt that many a young girl’s first grief is the seeing a deeper and a deeper gloom on her father’s brow, as he fails more and more to bear up against his share of the public burden, and finds that he must at length bring himself to the point, and surrender the child he has tenderly nurtured, and dismiss her to seek a laborious and precarious subsistence for herself. ”

“ The old oak has lived to see the people’s day.—O! may the breath of heaven stir it lightly;—may the spring rains fall softly as the wintry snow;—may the thunderbolt spare it, and the flash not dare to crisp its lightest leaf, that it may endure to witness something of that 124which is yet to come!—of the wisdom which shall issue sternly from the abyss of poverty, smoothing its rugged brow as it mounts to a milder and brighter region ”

“ There was more than one man about the court who was very willing to accept of the dignity of such an office, and to pay to the power that appointed him a certain fair proportion of the salary which the people must provide. One gentleman was accordingly sent to Spain, to amuse himself in reading Calderon, and another to some eastern place where he might sit on cushions, and smoke at the expense of the people of England, and to the private profit of their monarch. ”

“ Though the respective commodities of no two producers may be exactly suitable to their respective wishes, or equivalent in amount, yet, as every man’s instrument of demand and supply is identical, the aggregate demand of society must be precisely equal to its supply.
In other words, a general glut is impossible.
A partial glut is an evil which induces its own remedy; and the more quickly, the greater the evil; since, the aggregate demand and supply being always equal, a superabundance of one commodity testifies to the deficiency of another ”

“ Look into our thronged towns, and search in its cellars and garrets, its alleys and its wider streets, how many dwellers there see the face of their clergyman, and have learned from his lips the reason of the hope that is in them,—if such hope there indeed be! They hear that he who holds the benefice, i.e. is appointed their benefactor, is living in London, or travelling abroad, on the funds which are derived from the people, and that a curate, found by accident or advertisement, is coming to do the duty. ”

“ If there be any which mismanage its defence, and deny or pervert justice, and refuse public works, and make the church a scandal, and the court a spectacle for angels to weep over and devils to resort to, and, instead of speeding the people’s freedom with the wings of knowledge, shut them into the little cells of ancient men’s wits, it is time that such should know why God hath made them stewards, and should be alarmed for the coming of their Master. ”

“ For a long time past,—ever since I have been in the habit of comparing you and your pursuits with the people about you and their pursuits—ever since I came here,—I have been arriving at my present conviction, that every circumstance of our social condition,—the most trifling worldly interest of the meanest of us,—bears its relation to this great issue, and aids the force of tendency towards it. ”

“ Now that Arthur had not only a growing capital, but a surplus after replacing it—a revenue, which furnished him with more comforts perpetually, he was unwilling that his sister should feel so hurt as he knew she did at her husband not having assisted him with capital, from the time that he took his farm in the shape of a patch of prairie. In the early days of his enterprise, he would have been truly thankful for such an addition to his small stock of dollars as would have enabled him to cultivate a larger extent of ground, and live less hardly while his little property was growing faster ”

“ In respect of religious gravity, all men stand on the same ground; it is a matter between themselves and their God. But the government has another responsibility, in regard to its extravagance: it is answerable to men; for government does not earn the wealth it spends; and each act of waste is an injury to those who have furnished the means, and an insult to every man who toils hard for scanty bread. ”