Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-08-21

them in the History of poor England til
now. .
"THE DRY ROT AND vARN1sH." -.
Certain it is there is nothing but yul
! garity in our peoples expectations, reso
lutions or desires, in this epoch. Il is al
a peaceable moldering or tumbling down
from mere rottenness and decay whether
slowly moideFing or rapidly tumbling
there will be nothing found of real or true
in the rubbish heap, but a most trae desire
Of making money easily, and of eating il
pleasantly. A poor ideal for Tefornlers, y
sure enough. BUT il is the fruit Of long
antecedents, too; and from of old our hab-
its in regard to reformation" or repair
ing what went wrong las something is al
ways doing have been strangely di6aetic
| And to such length have we at last
brought il, by our willful, conscious and
now long-continued method of using par-
nish, instead of actual repair BY honest
carpentry, of what We all knew and saw to
haze gone undeniably wrong in our pre-
cedHres and affairs Method deliberateis.
steadily. and even solemnly contained.
with much admiration of it from ourselves
and Others as the best and only good one,
for above two hundred years. Ever since
that danus mirdbilis of 1860, when Oliver
CromwelPs dead clay was hung on the glib
bet, and much easier "reign of Christ"
under the divine gentleman called Charles
ii. was thought the fl thing, this has been
our steady method varnish, varnish if
thing have grown SO rotten that it yawns
palpably, and is so inexpressibly ugly that
the eyes of the very populace discern it
and detest it-bring out new pot of var
nish, with the requisite supply of putty,
and lay it on handsomely. Don't spare
varnish how well it will all look in few
days, if laid on well Varnish alone is
| cheap and is safe; avoid carpentering.
| chiseling, saving and hammering on the
| old quiet house dry rot is in it, who knows
how deep; don't disturb the old beams and
| junctures; varnish, varnish, if you will be
blessed by gods and men This is called
the constitutional system, conservative
system, and other fine names; and this at
last has its fruits, such as we see. Men
dacity hanging in the very air we breathe
all men become, unconsciously or half or
wholly consciously, liars to their own souls
and to other mems; grimacing, fnessing,
periphrasing, in continual hypocrisy of
tOOrd, by way of varnish to continual past.
present, future misperformance of thing
clearly sincere about nothing whatever,
except in silence, about the appetites of
their own huge belly, and the readiest
method of assuaging these From popu-
lation of that sunk kind, ardent only in
pursuits that are low and in industries that
are sensuous and bedgerish, there is little
peril of human enthusiasms, or revolutions
airy transports, such as occurred in 1889.
fnr A L, i I Il
essentially torpid and ignarHm on all that
is high or nobly human in revolutions
CHEAP AND NASTY"
Cheap and nasty" there is a preg-
nancy in that poor vulgar proverb, which |
wish we better saw and valued 1t is |
the rude indignant protest of human nature |
against a mischief which in all times and |
places taints it or lies near it, and which |
never in any time or place was so like ut,
terly overwhelming it as here and now. !
Understand, if you will consider it, that no |
good man did, or ever should, encourage |
cheapness" at the ruinous expense of |
unftneSs, which is always infdeIity, and is |
dishonOrable to a man. If want an arti- !
Gle, let 1t be genuine at whatever price [; |
if the price is too high for me, will go |
without it, unequipped with it for the |
present. shall not have equipped myself |
with hypocrisy, at any rate This, if y1u |
will reflect, is primarily the rule of all |
purchasing or employing men. They are
permitted to encourage, patronize, or in
form cOuntenance the working, wearing, or
acting of hypocrisies in this world. On
the contrary, they are to hate all such with /
a perfect hatred; to do their best in ex-
tinguishing them as the poison of man.
kind. This is the temper for purchasers of
work; how much more for doers and pro-
ducers of it! Work, every one of you,
like the Demiurgus or Eternal World |
builder; work, none of you, like the Dia-
bolus or Denier and Destroyer-under pen
alties
And now, if this is the fact, that you are
not to purchase, to make or to vend any
ware or product of the "cheap and nasty"
genus, and cannot in any case do it without |
sin, and even treason against the Maker of
you-eonsider what quantity of sin, of
treason, petty and high, must be accumu-
lating in poor England every day 1t is
certain as the national debt; and what are
all national money debts in comparison?
do you know the shop, sale-shop, workshop,
industrial establishment temporal or
spiritual, in broad England where genuine
work is to be had / confess hardly do
the more is my sorrow For while Pan
dora's box of evils lies in that one fact, my
friend; that one is enough for us, and may
be taken as the sad summary of all Uni
versal stoddy and Devils dust cunningly
vanished over; that is what you will find
presented you in all places, and ware in
vitingly cheap, if your experience is like
mine. Yes; if Free Trade is the new re-
ligion, and if Free Trade do mean, Free
racing with unlimited velocity in the career
of Cheap and Nasty-our practical hero will
be indefinitely anxious to deal with that
question, and see how Free Trade with
such devilin the belly of it, is to be tied
again a little.
One small example only London
bricks are reduced to dry clay again in the
course of sixty years, or sooner. Bricks,
burn them rightly, build them faithfully,
with mortar faithfully tempered, they will
stand, believe, barring earthquakes and
cannons, for 5000 years if You like
Etruscan pottery baked clay, but rightly
baked) is some 1000 years OF age, and still
fresh as an infant. Nothing | know of is
more lasting than well-made brick--we
have them here, at the head Of this gar
dCh wall OhNt VI a Adlol am
are in their third or fourth century Henry
Eighths time, | was told, and still perfect
in every particular
Truly the state of London houses and
London house building, at this time, who
shall express how detestable it is, how
frightful! For there lies in it not the
physical mischief only, but the moral too,
which is far more. / have often sadly
thought of this. That fresh human soul
should be born in such a place; born in
the midst OF a concrete mendacity taught
at every moment not 10 abhOr a lie, but TO
think lie all proper, the fixed custom and
general law of man, and TO twine its young
affections round that sort Of thing Eng
land needs to be rebuilt once every seventy
years. Build it once rightly the expense
will be say fifty per cent more; but it will
stand till the day Of judgment. Every
seventy years we shall save the expense Of
building all England over againl Say
nine-tenths of the expense, say three -fourths
of it (allowing for the changes necessary or
permissible in the change Of things); and
in rigorous arithmetic such is the saving
to you; lying under your nose there;
soliciting Won To pick IL ull-bv the nero