"
"I have never swerved from my one idea of the last seven years, that the
real battle of the time is, if England is to be saved from anarchy and
unbelief, and utter exhaustion caused by the competitive enslavement of
the masses, not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory--let the dead bury
their dead-but the Church, the gentlemen, and the workman, against the
shop-keepers and the Manchester School. The battle could not have been
fought forty years ago, because, on one side, the Church was an idle
phantasm, the gentleman too ignorant, the workman too merely animal; while,
on the other, the Manchester cotton-spinners were all Tories, and the
shopkeepers were a distinct class interest from theirs. But now these
two latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop-keeping and
labour-buying in the cheapest market shines forth in the person of Moses &
Son, and both cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say 'This is the man!'" and
join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our
true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the
present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them,
and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining
every nerve to keep off--a competitive United States, a democracy before
which the work of ages will go down in a few years.
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