Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/64

 value as a recreation ground, let ns not lose sight of the other and larger question—How far, even in less favoured regions, the rapid growth of large towns and the peculiar developments of modem trade can be approved as conducing to the formation of noble character, and to the 'Progress,' physical, moral, and spiritual, of the people.

The attempt to call attention to the threatened destruction of the Lake District, before it is too late, is already meeting with the approval and support of persons in all parts of the country. But the Public has been long accustomed, either to look upon every railway as an unmistakeable boon, or at best, to content itself, when any unusual sacrilege has been done, with a half-ejaculated 'Shame!' so that the work of arousing it to its duty is an arduous one. There are numbers of persons who are with us in principle and in sympathy, who are as yet only lukewarm. And these must be interested and roused if possible, and led to see that this is no selfish effort to save a few fields from being turned into cinder ground, but an honest endeavour to vindicate important but forgotten principles.

But we have not only to deal with objectors, but to meet opponents. Of these, some, it is true, are blinded only by selfishness or ignorance; but there are others who would openly trample underfoot all precious things to obtain one precious metal; and it is to contend with these that it behoves us earnestly to strengthen our forces.

To this deliberate service of Mammon, more than to any other cause, we owe the degradation of the arts of life, by division of labour and machinery, to merely mechanical toil; and their degeneracy,—for our vast machine power has been used not to supply our needs more easily and completely, but to encourage an extravagant and wasteful consumption of rubbish; with this pleasing result at the close of half a century of Progress,—that we can hardly obtain one of the manufactured products of our country of the sterling quality that our grandfathers could.