Page:Australian views of England.djvu/52

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40
AUSTRALIAN VIEWS
[Let.

kingly than a sense of sovereignty over material nature? And this sense of innate power—the cunning of his own right hand—when subordinated to a higher sense of moral duty, gives to him a nobleness of life which many in the favoured walks of society can never approach. Thousands of such men—the flower of modern England—are scattered through England's manufactories; and these men, and not the starred and titled, are the chief mourners of the departed Prince.

What strikes one in England as the most remarkable change in the moral aspect of society is the large amount of self-directed effort on the part of the working classes to improve their own condition. We see this on all hands, in temperance societies, in freehold-land societies, in penny banks, in co-operative shops, in workmen's libraries. Some of the finest public buildings in old historical towns are halls owned and managed chiefly by working men. In nearly every town of consequence the working classes have their co-operative provision store. And I have heard a plain mechanic, in a meeting of 6000 people, speak more common sense in ten minutes than all the other speakers put together; and, what was better,