Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/156

152

It is time to finish my discourse, or rather my sermon.

At the moment in which I write, the government has not yet considered the law of labor. It has not explained its force by any edict: nor has it preached to its subjects the love of labor, notwithstanding the urgent requests that I have addressed to it, and of which it takes no notice. I pity its blindness. God is my witness that I speak only the truth. An individual is pardonable if he is ignorant of some things; but is it admissible that the government should hide from the people's eyes the greatest happiness that can be in heaven or on the earth? I can never believe it.

I have just been told that I will not be permitted to publish my sermon. Why? 1st. Because the administrative authority also seeks to escape this horrible labor for bread. 2d. Because they hate us who nourish them. "Let these sixty millions of laborers suffer with hunger and cold, so long as we and ours may be happy!" And if you speak to them of love for our neighbor, they will respond by preaching philanthropy: but always in word, never in deed!

For five years, now, this state of affairs of which I speak has existed. In the presence of