Whether they were
likely to conciliate the workman to the powers that be, by informing him
that those powers were avowedly the priests of the very system which was
crushing him, let the reader judge.
The maintenance of order--of the order of disorder--that was to be the new
God before whom the working classes were to bow in spell-bound awe; an idol
more despicable and empty than even that old divine right of tyrants, newly
applied by some well-meaning but illogical personages, not merely as of old
to hereditary sovereigns, but to Louis Philippes, usurers, upstarts--why
not hereafter to demagogues? Blindfold and desperate bigots! who would
actually thus, in the imbecility of terror, deify that very right of the
physically strongest and cunningest, which, if anything, is antichrist
itself. That argument against sedition, the workmen heard; and,
recollecting 1688, went on their way, such as it was, unheeding.
One word more, even at the risk of offending many whom I should be very
sorry to offend, and I leave this hateful discussion. Let it ever be
remembered that the working classes considered themselves deceived,
cajoled, by the passers of the Reform Bill; that they cherished--whether
rightly or wrongly it is now too late to ask--a deep-rooted grudge
against those who had, as they thought, made their hopes and passions a
stepping-stone towards their own selfish ends.
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