When William Blake wrote his fine line about dark, satanic mills, he may have had churches in mind; it's now taken for a criticism of one of the grim features of the Industrial Revolution.
But you don't have to run some dark, satanic mill to prove that you're a Victorian at heart. A highly successful airline will do. Take Ryanair (or not, as the case may be). It's as bleak an example as you'll find of Victorianism in practice.
It's a while since the late 20th century collided with a company which has tried so hard to have its workers locked out; or threatens to dismiss any who dare to speak to press, radio or television about their conditions.
The point about freedom of speech was vividly made by a member of the Questions and Answers audience on Monday: the man sitting beside him was a Ryanair baggage-handler who couldn't be seen to speak for himself.
Then there were the baggage-handlers interviewed like criminals in the shadows so as not to be identified. What they were looking for, they said, was the right to be represented professionally.
They were only baggagehandlers; but the man on the other side of the negotiating table, when they got there, would be Michael O'Leary, the company's chief executive and one of the most experienced negotiators in the business.
Mr O'Leary may - but usually chooses not to - speak for himself. In fact, he has been so good at it that he was paid a bonus of £17 million by the company.
That's as much as a baggagehandler would earn if he went on working, full time, at current rates, not just to the end of the century but to the end of the millennium, the next millennium. In fact, for more than 1,130 years.
Ryanair represents the worst of Victorianism in practice. The kind of thing that inspired Marx's criticism of capitalism, dismays the proponents of a more reasonable approach to social and economic affairs and provokes squeaks of discomfort from the Government.
The Coalition is worried, not so much by guilt as by the by-elections in Limerick East and Dublin North. Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney and Mary O'Rourke have managed in turn to seem saddened, aggrieved, mildly indignant at Ryanair's behaviour.
After all, it eagerly seized such State aid as the first Fianna Fail Progressive Democrats coalition supplied, but now bites the hand that fed it in the early 1990s.
It refuses to take the conciliatory route devised by the State, the employers and the unions, to handle awkward cases.
Somebody suggested yesterday that Fianna Fail should take advantage of Mr Ahern's popularity and wheel him into every corner of Dublin North in the next few days.
I'm not so sure: Mr Ahern was the minister who, in 1990, devised the Industrial Relations Act which now binds the trade union movement hand and foot.
Pat Rabbitte and Eamon Gilmore wrote a pamphlet about it called Bertie's Bill. And the trade union movement, whose response might have been sharper if the benefits of social partnership were not beginning to be felt, paid less attention to the measure than it was due.
If Ryanair represents the worst of Victorianism in practice, what about the theory? The issue falls neatly into a wider debate provoked by the claims of the new right to have seen off the left and paved the way for a gloriously deregulated future.
The trouble with the new right is that its spokesmen find it difficult to construct arguments that amount to much more than slogans - which begin and end with payback time - or global assertions that crumble under questioning.
On Thursday's edition of Prime Time, Nick Mulcahy, the editor of Business Plus, replied to Des Geraghty's complaint of low pay and lousy conditions by saying that if workers didn't like it at Ryanair they could always leave.
But when the discussion turned to conditions of work in airlines generally or the agreement reached to help Aer Lingus, he was at sea; and, as to whether the airline would respond to ministerial pleading or recognise institutions established by the State, he had nothing to say.
Frank Fitzgibbon of the Sunday Times and Eoghan Hynes, representing small and medium enterprises (ISME), offered some notable insights into new right thinking in a debate on Network Two's Later on 2 with Rosheen Callendar of SIPTU and James Wrynn of the Labour Party.
Mr Fitzgibbon, who'd said on radio that he was glad the social partners didn't run the country, was even more pleased that Fianna Fail did; at least the party had kept its promise on taxation and allowed him to go on believing in democracy.
But FF's promises covered much more than tax cuts for the well-to-do and, if he'd bothered to listen, Mr Fitzgibbon might have learned how the party's promises to those in greater need of its help had been let down.
Some of Mr Hynes's members felt let down, too; ironically for a reason shared by Mr Wrynn and Ms Callendar: the Minister's pathetic failure to provide bigger tax cuts for the lower-paid.
ISME's reasoning, however, was not entirely altruistic. You may remember that it lately published the results of a survey which showed that the wages of people employed by its members were 25 per cent lower than the national average.
It seemed at the time as if ISME had suddenly found a conscience and decided to come clean about yet another case of low pay and lousy conditions. Sadly, no. And neither of the new right spokesmen seems conscious of the picture painted by the survey's wretched findings.
Mr Fitzgibbon and Mr Hynes find much to disagree about, but they share an unhealthy attitude to the public service and public servants.
Mr Hynes speaks of a very poor work ethic. Mr Fitzgibbon in a telling aside observes a cultural difference between the public and private sectors; and the difference is fear. Those in public service aren't afraid of losing their jobs; those in the private sector are.
Laughter is the enemy of fear. Dermot Morgan made his audiences laugh. But, because he was such a satirist, when they stopped they knew what they'd been laughing at and why. I hope the people of Dublin North and Limerick East laugh all the way to the polling booths on Wednesday.