The Master Worker is enchanted, for the present, like his Workhouse Workman; clamours, in vain hitherto, for a very simple sort of 'Liberty:' the liberty 'to buy where he finds it cheapest, to sell where he finds it dearest.' With guineas jingling in every pocket, he was no whit richer; but now, the very guineas threatening to vanish, he feels that he is poor indeed.

Poor Master Worker! And the Master Unworker, is not he in a still fataller situation?
Pausing amid his game-preserves, with awful eye,--as he well may! Coercing fifty-pound tenants; coercing, bribing, cajoling; doing what he likes with his own.

His mouth full of loud futilities, and arguments to prove the excellence of his Corn-law;* and in his heart the blackest misgiving, a desperate half-consciousness that his excellent Corn-law is indefensible, that his loud arguments for it are of a kind to strike men too literally _dumb._ -- ----------- [* Digital transcriber note: The "corn-law" that Carlyle repeatedly refers to was an English sliding-scale tariff on grain, which kept the price of bread artificially inflated.] -- ----------- To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth?
Who is it that it blesses; makes happier, wiser, beautifuller, in any way better?
Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-servant; to do him any real service whatsoever?
As yet no one.

We have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any Nation ever had before.

Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful; a strange success, if we stop here! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied.
Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all men, come to a pause; stand fixed, and cannot farther.