§ 41

Heavy taxation and inflated rates were telling upon production, and it was said, not once, but very generally: “We do not care to give away 50 per cent. of our earnings and hard-earned interest on a little money put by for old age and study, to a wasteful, shuffling Government, for whose follies in the past we are called upon to pay. We want, and mean to have, a real Democracy, not sham bureaucratic Government pulled by red tape and the impulses of impetuous politicians, who rush their fences when mounted upon lame hacks, trusting to Providence to land them on the other side, if possible, without a scratch. It has been known that riders have lost their seats in this proceeding.” The foregoing are not opinions created by the relator of this Dream, but constantly heard expressed by all sorts and conditions of men and spoken in public as well as in private; as such, together with more, equally trenchant and sensible, they represent the public opinion of the new Communes.

Dreams, like life, have distasteful moments. Even in them there are degrees of interest, commonplace situations, truisms, and paradox. But one has no choice, things are chosen for one, and in the sequence provided. Sometimes a very disorderly sequence! Subjects in a dream are arranged with anything but mathematical precision. Perhaps that constitutes half their charm. Everybody knows that the unexpected happens in life, as in dreams. The unexpected is, in this case, that the intellectual level in Britain rises higher and higher. The arts and sciences are taking their place in the new kingdom, and this, if it be true, is not an unnatural evolution, but a movement in the direction of survival of the fittest. The barbarous period of the near past was, in a sense, an accident. If, for a while, the influence of mental morphia prevailed, instincts were too strong to be permanently dulled. The spirit that was in the men who made our great cathedrals, who furnished our country with the most beautiful and desirable parish and village churches in all Europe, if unproductive, was not dead. The labours of generations of scholars, if put into the background in times of hurry-scurry, of facilities of swift locomotion, hence of restlessness, have not been thrown away. We were in such a desperate state of going to and fro that few found time to pause and think, to ask themselves the question if it were all worth while? If man, as a creative creature with a lot of the Angel in him, was mistaking Means for Ends? Means there were, and coming so swiftly that they jostled one another. So swiftly was every facility absorbed and made use of to acquire wealth (honestly or dishonestly didn’t matter) that the people were swept off their balance and became as atoms driven hither and thither in chaos. They mistook chaos for kosmos, licence for liberty, astuteness for intellect, the transient for permanency, and small things for great ones. The cry was, Agriculture does not pay. Of course it did not under the unnatural conditions of the time. Once upon a time 3 or 5 per cent. was good interest. When 10 per cent. was demanded, and much more hoped for, only gambling could provide it. Agriculture, the first need to be demanded, was pushed out of the field by Industrial Gambling. Ignorance of cause and effect, of the lessons to be got from History, blinded the eyes of gamblers to the fact that the fall of Roman power, while becoming almost universal, can be traced to the cessation of corn growing in the Agro Romano. Trusting her Colonies to provide grain led to idleness. A people, in the first place agricultural, released from an effort of their genius, became dilapidated and political; they exchanged Labour for luxury, easy getting for dignified control, and Rome became extravagant, and so, by degrees, she fell a victim to barbarians. She fell from a high to a low estate. Once a victor, and then a victim to the worst plague from which a nation can suffer: Idleness and greed for money without paying the price for it, Labour!