Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt

Fellow-Workmen: I am not going to take up your time by complimenting you. / It has been the fashion to compliment kings and other authorities when / they have come into power, and to tell them that, under their wise and / beneficent rule, happiness would certainly overflow the land. But the / end has not always corresponded to that beginning. If it were true that / we who work for wages had more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the / right use of power than has been shown by the aristocratic and mercantile / classes, we should not glory much in that fact, or consider that it / carried with it any near approach to infallibility.

In my opinion, there has been too much complimenting of that sort; and / whenever a speaker, whether he is one of ourselves or not, wastes our / time in boasting or flattery, I say, let us hiss him. If we have the / beginning of wisdom, which is, to know a little truth about ourselves, we / know that as a body we are neither very wise nor very virtuous. And to / prove this, I will not point specially to our own habits and doings, but / to the general state of the country. Any nation that had within it a / majority of men -- and we are the majority -- possessed of much wisdom and / virtue, would not tolerate the bad practices, the commercial lying and / swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods, the retail cheating, and / the political bribery which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A / majority has the power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and / hiss before we had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the / right place, if we had discerned better between good and evil, if the / multitude of us artisans, and factory hands, and miners, and laborers of / all sorts, had been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, / sober -- and I don't see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere / without these qualities -- we should have made an audience that would have / shamed the other classes out of their share in the national vices. We / should have had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, / honester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous / and brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of / men calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten / gains.