Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/244

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
208
THE DAWN OF DAY

New” and, above all, myself: changing my abode, as often as any danger of slavery may be threatening me; slumming neither adventure nor war, and in the worst case, preparing for death: anything rather than this unbecoming slavery, this sourness, malice and rebelliousThis would be the right spirit: the workmen in Europe ought henceforth to declare theirs an impossible class among mankind, and not merely, as is the present view, some harsh and injudicious arrangement of society: they ought to bring about in the European bee-hive an age of the rent swarming out, such as has never yet been seen, protesting by suchi voluntary and wholesale emigration against machines, capital and the threatening alternative of becoming either slaves of the State or slaves of the revolutionists. May Europe disburden herself of one-fourth of her inhabitants. Both she and they will feel relieved! Only in the far distance, in the swarming emigrations of colonists, we shall find out the true amount of reasonableness, fairness and wholesome distrust wherewith mother Europe has imbued her sons, — these sons who could no longer endure a life with the dull old woman, running the risk of growing its sullen, irritable and eager for pleasure as she herself has been. Far away from Europe, the virtues of Europe will be travelling along with these workmen; and those same qualities which in their native homes began to degenerate into dangerous ill-humour and criminal tendencies, will, when abroad, assume a will, beautiful naturalness and be