LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 

by Thomas Carlyle

 But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night. Birds of darkness are on the wing; spectres uproar; the dead walk; the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt make the Day dawn!--JEAN PAUL. 

 Then said his Lordship, "Well. God mend all!"--"Nay, by God, Donald, we must help him to mend it!" said the other. -- RUSHWORTH (_Sir David Ramsay and Lord Rea, in 1630_). 

CONTENTS. 

I. THE PRESENT TIME

II. MODEL PRISONS

III. DOWNING STREET

IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET

V. STUMP-ORATOR

NO. I. THE PRESENT TIME. [February 1, 1850. ]

The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir of all thePast Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Future, isever a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comes with new questions andsignificance, however commonplace it look: to know _it_, and what itbids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;--amid thebustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, whichif we cannot read and obey, it will not be well with us! No;--nor isthere any sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same, which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin whichour old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"--which we, with ourlight habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that nowis; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard ofthese, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and merecurrent semblances of these. This is true of all times and days. 

But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools are arrestedto ask the meaning of them; few of the generations of men have seenmore impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded: if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope thatwill suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world, if there is to be any world atall! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorryroutine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there; thissmall hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal deathmust be days of universal new-birth, if the ruin is not to be total andfinal! It is a Time to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence _he_ came? Whither he is bound?--A veritable "New Era, " to thefoolish as well as to the wise. 

Not long ago, the world saw, with thoughtless joy which might have beenvery thoughtful joy, a real miracle not heretofore considered possibleor conceivable in the world, --a Reforming Pope. A simple pious creature, a good country-priest, invested unexpectedly with the tiara, takes upthe New Testament, declares that this henceforth shall be his ruleof governing. No more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or fouldealing of any kind: God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice shall bedone, on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or Fatherof Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne of St. Peter;and such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to preside in! The Europeanpopulations everywhere hailed the omen; with shouting and rejoicingleading articles and tar-barrels; thinking people listened withastonishment, --not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise; with awerather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as of victory beyonddeath! Something pious, grand and as if awful in that joy, revealingonce more the Presence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to suchmen it was very clear how this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with hisNew Testament in his band. An alarming business, that of governingin the throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity! By the rule ofveracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter was openly declared, abovethree hundred years, ago, to be a falsity, a huge mistake, a pestilentdead carcass, which this Sun was weary of. More than three hundred yearsago, the throne of St. Peter received peremptory judicial notice toquit; authentic order, registered in Heaven's chancery and since legiblein the hearts of all brave men, to take itself away, --to begone, andlet us have no more to do with _it_ and its delusions and impiousdeliriums;--and it has been sitting every day since, it may depend uponit, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay exact damages yet forevery day it has so sat. Law of veracity? What this Popedom had to doby the law of veracity, was to give up its own foul galvanic life, anoffence to gods and men; honestly to die, and get itself buried. 

Far from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook in regard toit;--and yet, on the whole, it was essentially this too. "ReformingPope?" said one of our acquaintance, often in those weeks, "Was thereever such a miracle? About to break up that huge imposthume too, by'curing' it? Turgot and Necker were nothing to this. God is great; andwhen a scandal is to end, brings some devoted man to take charge ofit in hope, not in despair!"--But cannot he reform? asked many simplepersons;--to whom our friend in grim banter would reply: "Reform aPopedom, --hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to bottom, andconsisting mainly now of foul _grime_ and _rust_: stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with temporary putty, it may hangtogether yet a while; begin to hammer at it, solder at it, to what youcall mend and rectify it, --it will fall to sherds, as sure as rust isrust; go all into nameless dissolution, --and the fat in the fire will bea thing worth looking at, poor Pope!"--So accordingly it has proved. Thepoor Pope, amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds, went onjoyfully for a season: but he had awakened, he as no other man coulddo, the sleeping elements; mothers of the whirlwinds, conflagrations, earthquakes. Questions not very soluble at present, were even sagesand heroes set to solve them, began everywhere with new emphasis to beasked. Questions which all official men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till Doomsday. Doomsday itself _had_ come; that was theterrible truth!

For, sure enough, if once the law of veracity be acknowledged as therule for human things, there will not anywhere be want of work for thereformer; in very few places do human things adhere quite closely tothat law! Here was the Papa of Christendom proclaiming that such wasactually the case;--whereupon all over Christendom such results as wehave seen. The Sicilians, I think, were the first notable body that setabout applying this new strange rule sanctioned by the general Father;they said to themselves, We do not by the law of veracity belong toNaples and these Neapolitan Officials; we will, by favor of Heaven andthe Pope, be free of these. Fighting ensued; insurrection, fiercelymaintained in the Sicilian Cities; with much bloodshed, much tumult andloud noise, vociferation extending through all newspapers and countries. The effect of this, carried abroad by newspapers and rumor, was greatin all places; greatest perhaps in Paris, which for sixty years past hasbeen the City of Insurrections. The French People had plumed themselveson being, whatever else they were not, at least the chosen "soldiers ofliberty, " who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at least;and had become, as their orators, editors and litterateurs diligentlytaught them, a People whose bayonets were sacred, a kind of MessiahPeople, saving a blind world in its own despite, and earning forthemselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory very considerableindeed. And here were the wretched down-trodden populations of Sicilyrisen to rival them, and threatening to take the trade out of theirhand. 

No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very Pope's glory asa Reformer, of the very Sicilians fighting divinely for libertybehind barricades, --must have bitterly aggravated the feeling of everyFrenchman, as he looked around him, at home, on a Louis-Philippismwhich had become the scorn of all the world. "_Ichabod_; is the glorydeparting from us? Under the sun is nothing baser, by all accounts andevidences, than the system of repression and corruption, of shamelessdishonesty and unbelief in anything but human baseness, that we now liveunder. The Italians, the very Pope, have become apostles of liberty, andFrance is--what is France!"--We know what France suddenly became in theend of February next; and by a clear enough genealogy, we can trace aconsiderable share in that event to the good simple Pope with the NewTestament in his hand. An outbreak, or at least a radical change andeven inversion of affairs hardly to be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable in France: but it had been universallyexpected that France would as usual take the initiative in that matter;and had there been no reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, Francehad certainly not broken out then and so, but only afterwards andotherwise. The French explosion, not anticipated by the cunningest menthere on the spot scrutinizing it, burst up unlimited, complete, defyingcomputation or control. 

Close following which, as if by sympathetic subterranean electricities, all Europe exploded, boundless, uncontrollable; and we had the year1848, one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not since the irruptionof the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhereimmeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulateas the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies wasscandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane:--Enter, all the world, see what kind of Official holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigningpersons, stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole world bellowingin their ear, "Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios not heroes! Offwith you, off!" and, what was peculiar and notable in this year for thefirst time, the Kings all made haste to go, as if exclaiming, "We _are_poor histrios, we sure enough;--did you want heroes? Don't kill us;we couldn't help it!" Not one of them turned round, and stood upon hisKingship, as upon a right he could afford to die for, or to riskhis skin upon; by no manner of means. That, I say, is the alarmingpeculiarity at present. Democracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kingsconscious that they are but Play-actors. The miserable mortals, enactingtheir High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that this Universe mayperhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis, --the truculent Constable ofthe Destinies suddenly enters: "Scandalous Phantasms, what do _you_here? Are 'solemnly constituted Impostors' the proper Kings of men?Did you think the Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes? To be ledalways by the squeak of your paltry fiddle? Ye miserable, this Universeis not an upholstery Puppet-play, but a terrible God's Fact; and you, I think, --had not you better begone!" They fled precipitately, someof them with what we may call an exquisite ignominy, --in terror of thetreadmill or worse. And everywhere the people, or the populace, taketheir own government upon themselves; and open "kinglessness, " whatwe call _anarchy_, --how happy if it be anarchy _plus_ astreet-constable!--is everywhere the order of the day. Such was thehistory, from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Sincethe destruction of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the NorthernBarbarians, I have known nothing similar. 

And so, then, there remained no King in Europe; no King except thePublic Haranguer, haranguing on barrel-head, in leading article; orgetting himself aggregated into a National Parliament to harangue. Andfor about four months all France, and to a great degree all Europe, rough-ridden by every species of delirium, except happily the murderousfor most part, was a weltering mob, presided over by M. De Lamartine, atthe Hotel-de-Ville; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman, whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest and heaven-sentevangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to beproperly "the first stump-orator in the world, standing too onthe highest stump, --for the time. " A sorrowful spectacle to men ofreflection, during the time he lasted, that poor M. De Lamartine; withnothing in him but melodious wind and _soft sawder_, which he and otherstook for something divine and not diabolic! Sad enough; the eloquentlatest impersonation of Chaos-come-again; able to talk for itself, anddeclare persuasively that it is Cosmos! However, you have but to wait alittle, in such cases; all balloons do and must give up their gas in thepressure of things, and are collapsed in a sufficiently wretched mannerbefore long. 

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populacerises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end ofEurope Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistibleand less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on whata bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammablemutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in thepresent epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal tosuch revolutions--students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankruptdesperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millionsand blowing it into flame, --might give rise to reflections as tothe character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almostchildren, take such a command in human affairs. A changed time sincethe word _Senior_ (Seigneur, or _Elder_) was first devised to signify"lord, " or superior;--as in all languages of men we find it to havebeen! Not an honorable document this either, as to the spiritualcondition of our epoch. In times when men love wisdom, the old man willever be venerable, and be venerated, and reckoned noble: in times thatlove something else than wisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom, and see little or none to love, the old man will cease to be venerated;and looking more closely, also, you will find that in fact he has ceasedto be venerable, and has begun to be contemptible; a foolish boy still, a boy without the graces, generosities and opulent strength of youngboys. In these days, what of _lordship_ or leadership is still to bedone, the youth must do it, not the mature or aged man; the mature man, hardened into sceptical egoism, knows no monition but that of his ownfrigid cautious, avarices, mean timidities; and can lead no-whithertowards an object that even seems noble. But to return. 

This mad state of matters will of course before long allay itself, asit has everywhere begun to do; the ordinary necessities of men's dailyexistence cannot comport with it, and these, whatever else iscast aside, will have their way. Some remounting--very temporaryremounting--of the old machine, under new colors and altered forms, willprobably ensue soon in most countries: the old histrionic Kings willbe admitted back under conditions, under "Constitutions, " with nationalParliaments, or the like fashionable adjuncts; and everywhere the olddaily life will try to begin again. But there is now no hope thatsuch arrangements can be permanent; that they can be other than poortemporary makeshifts, which, if they try to fancy and make themselvespermanent, will be displaced by new explosions recurring more speedilythan last time. In such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid ragingbottomless eddies and conflicting sea-currents, not steadfast ason fixed foundations, must European Society continue swaying, nowdisastrously tumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, at evershorter intervals, --till once the _new_ rock-basis does come to light, and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and of need to mutiny, abate again!

For universal _Democracy_, whatever we may think of it, has declareditself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live; and hewho has any chance to instruct, or lead, in his days, must begin byadmitting that: new street-barricades, and new anarchies, still morescandalous if still less sanguinary, must return and again return, tillgoverning persons everywhere know and admit that. Democracy, it may besaid everywhere, is here:--for sixty years now, ever since the grand or_First_ French Revolution, that fact has been terribly announced to allthe world; in message after message, some of them very terrible indeed;and now at last all the world ought really to believe it. That the worlddoes believe it; that even Kings now as good as believe it, and know, or with just terror surmise, that they are but temporary phantasmPlay-actors, and that Democracy is the grand, alarming, imminent andindisputable Reality: this, among the scandalous phases we witnessedin the last two years, is a phasis full of hope: a sign that we areadvancing closer and closer to the very Problem itself, which it willbehoove us to solve or die; that all fighting and campaigning andcoalitioning in regard to the _existence_ of the Problem, is hopelessand superfluous henceforth. The gods have appointed it so; no Pitt, norbody of Pitts or mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise. Democracy, sure enough, is here; one knows not how long it will keep hiddenunderground even in Russia;--and here in England, though we object to itresolutely in the form of street-barricades and insurrectionary pikes, and decidedly will not open doors to it on those terms, the tramp ofits million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of itsbewildered thousand-fold voice is in all writings and speakings, in allthinkings and modes and activities of men: the soul that does not now, with hope or terror, discern it, is not the one we address on thisoccasion. 

What is Democracy; this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, whichis everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days? Therelies the question for us. Whence comes it, this universal big blackDemocracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it? A meaning itmust have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning ofit, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, stillhope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not bepossible!--The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, inthe name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeplyto heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort, whatthe meaning of this universal revolt of the European Populations, whichcalls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be. 

Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; inwhich curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat theidle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high;in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that _now_ theNew Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity hascome. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroicbarricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven! one of theinevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universalfoolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same. Thefront wall of your wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by youto no purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallenprostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still hangon by the mere beam-ends, and coherency of old carpentry, though in asloping direction, and depend there till certain poor rusty nailsand worm-eaten dovetailings give way:--but is it cheering, in suchcircumstances, that the whole household burst forth into celebratingthe new joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness ofposition, and thank God that now they have got a house to their mind? Mydear household, cease singing and psalmodying; lay aside your fiddles, take out your work-implements, if you have any; for I can say withconfidence the laws of gravitation are still active, and rusty nails, worm-eaten dovetailings, and secret coherency of old carpentry, are notthe best basis for a household!--In the lanes of Irish cities, Ihave heard say, the wretched people are sometimes found living, andperilously boiling their potatoes, on such swing-floors and inclinedplanes hanging on by the joist-ends; but I did not hear that they sangvery much in celebration of such lodging. No, they slid gently about, sat near the back wall, and perilously boiled their potatoes, in silencefor most part!--

High shouts of exultation, in every dialect, by every vehicle of speechand writing, rise from far and near over this last avatar of Democracyin 1848: and yet, to wise minds, the first aspect it presents seemsrather to be one of boundless misery and sorrow. What can be moremiserable than this universal hunting out of the high dignitaries, solemn functionaries, and potent, grave and reverend signiors ofthe world; this stormful rising-up of the inarticulate dumb masseseverywhere, against those who pretended to be speaking for them andguiding them? These guides, then, were mere blind men only pretendingto see? These rulers were not ruling at all; they had merely got on theattributes and clothes of rulers, and were surreptitiously drawingthe wages, while the work remained undone? The Kings were Sham-Kings, play-acting as at Drury Lane;--and what were the people withal that tookthem for real?

It is probably the hugest disclosure of _falsity_ in human things thatwas ever at one time made. These reverend Dignitaries that sat amidtheir far-shining symbols and long-sounding long-admitted professions, were mere Impostors, then? Not a true thing they were doing, but afalse thing. The story they told men was a cunningly devised fable; thegospels they preached to them were not an account of man's real positionin this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts and unbornshadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices, --a falsityof falsities, which at last _ceases_ to stick together. Wilfully andagainst their will, these high units of mankind were cheats, then; andthe low millions who believed in them were dupes, --a kind of _inverse_cheats, too, or they would not have believed in them so long. Auniversal _Bankruptcy of Imposture_; that may be the brief definitionof it. Imposture everywhere declared once more to be contrary to Nature;nobody will change its word into an act any farther:--fallen insolvent;unable to keep its head up by these false pretences, or make its potboil any more for the present! A more scandalous phenomenon, wide asEurope, never afflicted the face of the sun. Bankruptcy everywhere; foulignominy, and the abomination of desolation, in all high places: odiousto look upon, as the carnage of a battle-field on the morrow morning;--amassacre not of the innocents; we cannot call it a massacre of theinnocents; but a universal tumbling of Impostors and of Impostures intothe street!--

Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful? There is a joy in it, to thewise man too; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it were sadder thanany sorrow, --like the vision of immortality, unattainable except throughdeath and the grave! And yet who would not, in his heart of hearts, feelpiously thankful that Imposture has fallen bankrupt? By all means let itfall bankrupt; in the name of God let it do so, with whatever misery toitself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then, --known it mustand shall be, --is hateful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understandthis everywhere; and swiftly make ready for departure, wherever it yetlingers; and let it learn never to return, if possible! The eternalvoices, very audibly again, are speaking to proclaim this message, from side to side of the world. Not a very cheering message, but a veryindispensable one. 

Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here; that we are not permittedto regret its being here, --for who that had, for this divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish that Shams of any kind, especially that Sham-Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it isto be prayed by all men that Shams may _cease_. Good Heavens, to whatdepths have we got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strangeto many a man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomelydigesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, itseems strange exceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, andbig with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long sincefallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grownceremonial, --what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all his lifelong; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was anygetting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, andgroceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quitecomfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleasedto call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honorablemembers perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real andno sham there, did not scrip continue salable, and the banker pay inbullion, or paper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I havealways thought, is he that would destroy shams. "

Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of this epoch, got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards thestate of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quite recent generationswas such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forth among the sons ofAdam; never before did the creature called man believe generally inhis heart that lies were the rule in this Earth; that in deliberatelong-established lying could there be help or salvation for him, couldthere be at length other than hindrance and destruction for him. OHeavyside, my solid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what on earthcan become of us till this accursed enchantment, the general summary andconsecration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart and life ofone and all! Cast forth it will be; it must, or we are tending, at allmoments, whitherward I do not like to name. Alas, and the casting ofit out, to what heights and what depths will it lead us, in the saduniverse mostly of lies and shams and hollow phantasms (grown veryghastly now), in which, as in a safe home, we have lived this centuryor two! To heights and depths of social and individual _divorce_ fromdelusions, --of "reform" in right sacred earnest, of indispensableamendment, and stern sorrowful abrogation and order to depart, --suchas cannot well be spoken at present; as dare scarcely be thought atpresent; which nevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps ratherimminent several of them! Truly we have a heavy task of work before us;and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon it, before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which there will be noworking, but only suffering and hopelessly perishing!

Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, will itself manageit? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxesand such like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change fromDelusive to Real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by?--To thegreat mass of men, I am aware, the matter presents itself quite on thishopeful side. Democracy they consider to _be_ a kind of "Government. "The old model, formed long since, and brought to perfection in Englandnow two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nations as thenew healing for every woe: "Set up a Parliament, " the Nations everywheresay, when the old King is detected to be a Sham-King, and hunted out ornot; "set up a Parliament; let us have suffrages, universal suffrages;and all either at once or by due degrees will be right, and a realMillennium come!" Such is their way of construing the matter. 

Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the matter; if it were, I should have had the happiness of remaining silent, and been withoutcall to speak here. It is because the contrary of all this is deeplymanifest to me, and appears to be forgotten by multitudes of mycontemporaries, that I have had to undertake addressing a word to them. The contrary of all this;--and the farther I look into the roots of allthis, the more hateful, ruinous and dismal does the state of mind allthis could have originated in appear to me. To examine this recipe of aParliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay how fit it may nowbe, in these new times, for governing England itself where we are usedto it so long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinkingmen, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for the smallstill voices and eternal intimations, across the temporary clamors andloud blaring proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by therigorous fact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demandpractical decision or redecision of it from us, --with enormous penaltyif we decide it wrong! I think we shall all have to consider thisquestion, one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisuremay be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or anyconceivable kind of suffrages, is the method, then certainly let us setabout discovering the kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till wehave got them. But it is possible a Parliament may not be the method!Possible the inveterate notions of the English People may have settledit as the method, and the Everlasting Laws of Nature may have settled itas not the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at all, iftaken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such suffrages is not themethod settled by this latter authority, then it will urgently behooveus to become aware of that fact, and to quit such method;--we may dependupon it, however unanimous we be, every step taken in that directionwill, by the Eternal Law of things, be a step _from_ improvement, nottowards it. 

Not towards it, I say, if so! Unanimity of voting, --that will do nothingfor us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plansof voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, inthe most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to getround Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, andfixed with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who areentirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will getround the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever backagain; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, willnudge you with most chaotic "admonition;" you will be flung half frozenon the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your icebergcouncillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get roundCape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship;--yes indeed, the ship's crewmay be very unanimous, which doubtless, for the time being, will be verycomfortable to the ship's crew, and to their Phantasm Captain if theyhave one: but if the tack they unanimously steer upon is guiding theminto the belly of the Abyss, it will not profit them much!--Shipsaccordingly do not use the ballot-box at all; and they reject thePhantasm species of Captains: one wishes much some other Entities--sinceall entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws--could be broughtto show as much wisdom, and sense at least of self-preservation, thefirst command of Nature. Phantasm Captains with unanimous votings: thisis considered to be all the law and all the prophets, at present. 

If a man could shake out of his mind the universal noise of politicaldoctors in this generation and in the last generation or two, andconsider the matter face to face, with his own sincere intelligencelooking at it, I venture to say he would find this a very extraordinarymethod of navigating, whether in the Straits of Magellan or theundiscovered Sea of Time. To prosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement, either for a man or a nation, there is butone thing requisite, That the man or nation can discern what the trueregulations of the Universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, andcan faithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him tovictory; whoever it may be that sets him in the way of these, --wereit Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Force of PublicOpinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy the Seraphic Doctor with hisLast-evangel of Political Economy, --sets him in the sure way to pleasethe Author of this Universe, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever does the contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. This may be taken as fixed. 

And now by what method ascertain the monition of the gods in regard toour affairs? How decipher, with best fidelity, the eternal regulationof the Universe; and read, from amid such confused embroilments ofhuman clamor and folly, what the real Divine Message to us is? A divinemessage, or eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily is, inregard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man: faithfullyfollowing this, said procedure or affair will prosper, and have thewhole Universe to second it, and carry it, across the fluctuatingcontradictions, towards a victorious goal; not following this, mistakingthis, disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain for everyaffair. How find it? All the world answers me, "Count heads; askUniversal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell. " UniversalSuffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well, --I perceive we have gotinto strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half-century orso, either the Universe or else the heads of men must have altered verymuch. Half a century ago, and down from Father Adam's time till then, the Universe, wherever I could hear tell of it, was wont to be ofsomewhat abstruse nature; by no means carrying its secret written on itsface, legible to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinately hidingits secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons, andpartially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone, whose numberwas not the majority in my time!

Or perhaps the chief end of man being now, in these improved epochs, to make money and spend it, his interests in the Universe have becomeamazingly simplified of late; capable of being voted on with effectby almost anybody? "To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in thedearest:" truly if that is the summary of his social duties, and thefinal divine message he has to follow, we may trust him extensivelyto vote upon that. But if it is not, and never was, or can be? If theUniverse will not carry on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortalsthat have no higher aim, --being still "a Temple and Hall of Doom, " nota mere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universehas decided to _reject_ Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and willabolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their "markets"and them, unless they think of it?--In that case it were better to thinkof it: and the Democracies and Universal Suffrages, I can observe, willrequire to modify themselves a good deal!

Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation that could subsistupon Democracy. Of ancient Republics, and _Demoi_ and _Populi_, we haveheard much; but it is now pretty well admitted to be nothing to ourpurpose;--a universal-suffrage republic, or a general-suffrage one, orany but a most-limited-suffrage one, never came to light, or dreamed ofdoing so, in ancient times. When the mass of the population were slaves, and the voters intrinsically a kind of _kings_, or men born torule others; when the voters were real "aristocrats" and manageabledependents of such, --then doubtless voting, and confused jumbling oftalk and intrigue, might, without immediate destruction, or the need ofa Cavaignac to intervene with cannon and sweep the streets clear of it, go on; and beautiful developments of manhood might be possible besideit, for a season. Beside it; or even, if you will, by means of it, and in virtue of it, though that is by no means so certain as is oftensupposed. Alas, no: the reflective constitutional mind has misgivings asto the origin of old Greek and Roman nobleness; and indeed knows not howthis or any other human nobleness could well be "originated, " or broughtto pass, by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the graceof God very mainly;--and remembers, with a sigh, that of the SevenSages themselves no fewer than three were bits of Despotic Kings, [Gr. ]_Turannoi_, "Tyrants" so called (such being greatly wanted there);and that the other four were very far from Red Republicans, if of anypolitical faith whatever! We may quit the Ancient Classical concern, andleave it to College-clubs and speculative debating-societies, in theselate days. 

Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or that are stillon trial, --of these also it is not needful to say any word. But thereis one modern instance of Democracy nearly perfect, the Republic ofthe United States, which has actually subsisted for threescore years ormore, with immense success as is affirmed; to which many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations, and a "Model Republic. " Is notAmerica an instance in point? Why should not all Nations subsist andflourish on Democracy, as America does?

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as littleas another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of useven felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects ablessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions ofAnglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, withthe axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind ofimplements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields forthe sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history ofthe world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheeringfeat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, thewise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. Nay the title hitherto to be a Commonwealth or Nation at all, among the[Gr. ] _ethne_ of the world, is, strictly considered, still a thingthey are but striving for, and indeed have not yet done much towardsattaining. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there; went over with them from the Old-Puritan Englishworkshop ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from Englandready-made, --their common English Language, and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate and now, as itwere, inborn reverence for the Constable's Staff; two quite immenseattainments, which England had to spend much blood, and valiant sweat ofbrow and brain, for centuries long, in achieving;--and what new elementsof polity or nationhood, what noble new phasis of human arrangement, orsocial device worthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to lightin America? Cotton crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light;and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respect theconstable can live, for the present _without_ Government: this comesto light; and the profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, here utteringitself as silent patient unspeakable ennui, there coming out as vagueelegiac wailings, that there is still next to nothing more. "Anarchy_plus_ a street-constable:" that also is anarchic to me, and other thanquite lovely!

I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are full, the verystreet-constable, on these poor terms, will have become impossible:without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I do not see how hecould continue possible many weeks. Cease to brag to me of America, andits model institutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep thereis nothing granted in this world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to menthat sit idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroicancestors, saying, "It is well, it is well!" Corn and bacon are granted:not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreover which, onsuch conditions, cannot last!--No: America too will have to strain itsenergies, in quite other fashion than this; to crack its sinews, and allbut break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-foldwrestle with the Pythons and mud-demons, before it can become ahabitation for the gods. America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. NewSpiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly aswere ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Futureon America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but onother terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughsand hammers, in a very successful manner; hitherto, in spite of her"roast-goose with apple-sauce, " she is not much. "Roast-goose withapple-sauce for the poorest workingman:" well, surely that is something, thanks to your respect for the street-constable, and to your continentsof fertile waste land;--but that, even if it could continue, is byno means enough; that is not even an instalment towards what will berequired of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! Theirquantity of cotton, dollars, industry and resources, I believe to bealmost unspeakable; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing thatone could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None:the American cousins have yet done none of these things. "What they havedone?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject: "They have doubledtheir population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapiditybeyond recorded example, Eighteen Millions of the greatest _bores_ever seen in this world before, --that hitherto is their feat inHistory!"--And so we leave them, for the present; and cannot predict thesuccess of Democracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from their example. 

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible! So much, with certainty of loud astonishedcontradiction from all manner of men at present, but with sure appealto the Law of Nature and the ever-abiding Fact, may be suggested andasserted once more. The Universe itself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy;large liberty of "voting" there, all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but with conditions inexorable and immeasurable annexed to everyexercise of the same. A most free commonwealth of "voters;" but withEternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced by AlmightyPower! This is the model of "constitutions;" this: nor in any Nationwhere there has not yet (in some supportable and withal some constantlyincreasing degree) been confided to the _Noblest_, with his selectseries of _Nobler_, the divine everlasting duty of directing andcontrolling the Ignoble, has the "Kingdom of God, " which we all prayfor, "come, " nor can "His will" even _tend_ to be "done on Earth asit is in Heaven" till then. My Christian friends, and indeed mySham-Christian and Anti-Christian, and all manner of men, are invitedto reflect on this. They will find it to be the truth of the case. TheNoble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all timesand in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law. 

To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him by whatevermethod, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from old wont, this, little as we may regard it, is, in all times and countries, a practicalblasphemy, and Nature will in nowise forget it. Alas, there lies theorigin, the fatal necessity, of modern Democracy everywhere. It isthe Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest; it is God-Almighty's Noble, not theCourt-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must, insome approximate degree, be raised to the supreme place; he and not acounterfeit, --under penalties! Penalties deep as death, and atlength terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend!--Will theballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any saneman deliberately believe such a thing? That nevertheless is theindispensable result, attain it how we may: if that is attained, all isattained; if not that, nothing. He that cannot believe the ballot-boxto be attaining it, will be comparatively indifferent to the ballot-box. Excellent for keeping the ship's crew at peace under their PhantasmCaptain; but unserviceable, under such, for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, that there should be human beings requiring to have these thingsargued of, at this late time of day!

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governedby the wise; to be guided in the right path by those who know it betterthan they. This is the first "right of man;" compared with which allother rights are as nothing, --mere superfluities, corollaries which willfollow of their own accord out of this; if they be not contradictionsto this, and less than nothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; farother indeed. Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, itimplies preservation of themselves withal; but intrinsically it is theharshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his hand. Aduty which he would fain enough shirk; which accordingly, in thesesad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he has long everywhere beenendeavoring to reduce to its minimum, and has in fact in most casesnearly escaped altogether. It is an ungoverned world; a world which weflatter ourselves will henceforth need no governing. On the dust of ourheroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It iswell, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we havebeen permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallowlaughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savageforest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming itwould grow spontaneous crops forever, --find it now in a too questionablestate; peremptorily requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real"agriculture" is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (withballot-box or otherwise) than to plough!

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He that isfittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained. By multifarious devices we have been endeavoring to dispense withgoverning; and by very superficial speculations, of _laissez-faire_, supply-and-demand, &c. &c. To persuade ourselves that it is best so. TheReal Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hiredby Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, insad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evilungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself. The Real Captainundiscoverable; the Phantasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous:--it isthought Phantasm Captains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the true method, after all. They are much the pleasantest for the time being! And so no_Dux_ or Duke of any sort, in any province of our affairs, now _leads_:the Duke's Bailiff _leads_, what little leading is required for gettingin the rents; and the Duke merely rides in the state-coach. It iseverywhere so: and now at last we see a world all rushing towardsstrange consummations, because it is and has long been so!

I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in England atall, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and the RevolutionaryMillenniums preached by the French Prophets in this age: but there aremany movements here too which tend inevitably in the like direction; andgood men, who would stand aghast at Red Republic and its adjuncts, seemto me travelling at full speed towards that or a similar goal! Certainlythe notion everywhere prevails among us too, and preaches itself abroadin every dialect, uncontradicted anywhere so far as I can hear, Thatthe grand panacea for social woes is what we call "enfranchisement, ""emancipation;" or, translated into practical language, the cuttingasunder of human relations, wherever they are found grievous, as is liketo be pretty universally the case at the rate we have been going forsome generations past. Let us all be "free" of one another; weshall then be happy. Free, without bond or connection except that ofcash-payment; fair day's wages for the fair day's work; bargained for byvoluntary contract, and law of supply-and-demand: this is thought to bethe true solution of all difficulties and injustices that have occurredbetween man and man. 

To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; it imperatively requires to be amended; andthe remedy is, Abolish it, let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the "Sacrament of Marriage" downwards, human beings used to bemanifoldly related, one to another, and each to all; and there was norelation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievancesand difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. Buthenceforth, be it known, we have changed all that, by favor of Heaven:"the voluntary principle" has come up, which will itself do the businessfor us; and now let a new Sacrament, that of Divorce, which we callemancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order ofthe day!--Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what itcertainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation which has anywheregrown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory tovoluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition ofnomadic:--in other words, loosen by assiduous wedges in every joint, thewhole fabric of social existence, stone from stone: till at last, allnow being loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage; and, lying as meremountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. , overit, and to rejoice in the new remarkable era of human progress we havearrived at. 

Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among us, this goodwhile; and has got to such a length as might give rise to reflectionsin men of a serious turn. West-Indian Blacks are emancipated, andit appears refuse to work: Irish Whites have long been entirelyemancipated; and nobody asks them to work, or on condition of findingthem potatoes (which, of course, is indispensable), permits them towork. --Among speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen: In theprogress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all theHorses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the supply-and-demandprinciple? Horses too have "motives;" are acted on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted leather; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankfulness, vindictiveness; some rude outlineof all our human spiritualities, --a rude resemblance to us in mind andintelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumbfour-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affections, gratitudes; and deserves good usage; no human master, without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly lay on the whip whereit is not needed:--I am sure if I could make him "happy, " I should bewilling to grant a small vote (in addition to the late twenty millions)for that object!

Him too you occasionally tyrannize over; and with bad result toyourselves, among others; using the leather in a tyrannous unnecessarymanner; withholding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilatedstabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are alittle tyrannous at times. "Am I not a horse, and half-brother?"--Toremedy which, so far as remediable, fancy--the horses all "emancipated;"restored to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe:turned out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand manner! So longas grass lasts, I dare say they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring morning, with a sieveof oats in his hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is hehappy? Help me to plough this day, Black Dobbin: oats in full measure ifthou wilt. "Hlunh, No--thank!" snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers gloriousliberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? "Hlunh!"--GrayJoan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare, --O Heaven, she too answersHlunh! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-cropsare _ended_ in this world!--For the sake, if not of Hodge, then ofHodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, anda new and better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses toemancipate them! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable Earth no grass to eat, --in BlackJamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none;--to roamaimless, wasting the seedfields of the world; and be hunted home toChaos, by the due watch-dogs and due hell-dogs, with such horrors offorsaken wretchedness as were never seen before! These things are notsport; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour. 

Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these twoextremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find anywork, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kindand another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary Principle, Time will mend it:--till British industrial existence seems fastbecoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral;a hideous _living_ Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; such aCurtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never sawtill now. These scenes, which the _Morning Chronicle_ is bringing hometo all minds of men, --thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers haveseldom done, --ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly todeath; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, _helping_ saidNeedlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair. 

Thirty thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrefying well ofabominations; they have oozed in upon London, from the universal Stygianquagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated in the _well_ ofthe concern, to that extent. British charity is smitten to the heart, at the laying bare of such a scene; passionately undertakes, by enormoussubscription of money, or by other enormous effort, to redress thatindividual horror; as I and all men hope it may. But, alas, what next?This general well and cesspool once baled clean out to-day, will beginbefore night to fill itself anew. The universal Stygian quagmire isstill there; opulent in women ready to be ruined, and in men ready. Towards the same sad cesspool will these waste currents of human ruinooze and gravitate as heretofore; except in draining the universalquagmire itself there is no remedy. "And for that, what is the method?"cry many in an angry manner. To whom, for the present, I answer only, "Not 'emancipation, ' it would seem, my friends; not the cutting loose ofhuman ties, something far the reverse of that!"

Many things have been written about shirtmaking; but here perhaps isthe saddest thing of all, not written anywhere till now, that I know of. Shirts by the thirty thousand are made at twopence-halfpenny each; andin the mean while no needlewoman, distressed or other, can be procuredin London by any housewife to give, for fair wages, fair help in sewing. Ask any thrifty house-mother, high or low, and she will answer. In highhouses and in low, there is the same answer: no _real_ needlewoman, "distressed" or other, has been found attainable in any of the houses Ifrequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who demand considerable wages, and havea deepish appetite for beer and viands, I hear of everywhere; but theirsewing proves too often a distracted puckering and botching; not sewing, only the fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination of the mind. Goodsempstresses are to be hired in every village; and in London, with itsfamishing thirty thousand, not at all, or hardly, --Is not No-governmentbeautiful in human business? To such length has the Leave-aloneprinciple carried it, by way of organizing labor, in this affair ofshirtmaking. Let us hope the Leave-alone principle has now got itsapotheosis; and taken wing towards higher regions than ours, to dealhenceforth with a class of affairs more appropriate for it!

Reader, did you ever hear of "Constituted Anarchy"? Anarchy;the choking, sweltering, deadly and killing rule of No-rule; theconsecration of cupidity, and braying folly, and dim stupidity andbaseness, in most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable threehalfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls?Solemn Bishops and high Dignitaries, _our_ divine "Pillars of Fire bynight, " debating meanwhile, with their largest wigs and gravest look, upon something they call "prevenient grace"? Alas, our noble men ofgenius, Heaven's _real_ messengers to us, they also rendered nearlyfutile by the wasteful time;--preappointed they everywhere, andassiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise inParliament, " to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to beapproved of by the gods! Our "Government, " a highly "responsible"one; responsible to no God that I can hear of, but to the twenty-sevenmillion _gods_ of the shilling gallery. A Government tumbling anddrifting on the whirlpools and mud-deluges, floating atop in aconspicuous manner, no-whither, --like the carcass of a drowned ass. Authentic _Chaos_ come up into this sunny Cosmos again; and all mensinging Gloria in _excelsis_ to it. In spirituals and temporals, infield and workshop, from Manchester to Dorsetshire, from Lambeth Palaceto the Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meet and toil and traffictogether, --Anarchy, Anarchy; and only the street-constable (though withever-increasing difficulty) still maintaining himself in the middle ofit; that so, for one thing, this blessed exchange of slop-shirts forthe souls of women may transact itself in a peaceable manner!--I, for mypart, do profess myself in eternal opposition to this, and discern wellthat universal Ruin has us in the wind, unless we can get out of this. My friend Crabbe, in a late number of his _Intermittent Radiator_, pertinently enough exclaims:--

"When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty, VoluntaryPrinciple, Dangers of Centralization, and the like? It is really gettingtoo bad. For British Liberty, it seems, the people cannot be taughtto read. British Liberty, shuddering to interfere with the rights ofcapital, takes six or eight millions of money annually to feed theidle laborer whom it dare not employ. For British Liberty we live overpoisonous cesspools, gully-drains, and detestable abominations; andomnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself. British Libertyproduces--what? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, and apparentlylittle else at present. If these are the results of British Liberty, I, for one, move we should lay it on the shelf a little, and look out forsomething other and farther. We have achieved British Liberty hundredsof years ago; and are fast growing, on the strength of it, one of themost absurd populations the Sun, among his great Museum of Absurdities, looks down upon at present. "

Curious enough: the model of the world just now is England and herConstitution; all Nations striving towards it: poor France swimmingthese last sixty years in seas of horrid dissolution and confusion, resolute to attain this blessedness of free voting, or to die in chaseof it. Prussia too, solid Germany itself, has all broken out intocrackling of musketry, loud pamphleteering and Frankfort parliamentingand palavering; Germany too will scale the sacred mountains, how steepsoever, and, by talisman of ballot-box, inhabit a political Elysiumhenceforth. All the Nations have that one hope. Very notable, andrather sad to the humane on-looker. For it is sadly conjectured, all theNations labor somewhat under a mistake as to England, and the causes ofher freedom and her prosperous cotton-spinning; and have much misreadthe nature of her Parliament, and the effect of ballot-boxes anduniversal suffrages there. 

What if it were because the English Parliament was from the first, and is only just now ceasing to be, a Council of actual Rulers, realGoverning Persons (called Peers, Mitred Abbots, Lords, Knights of theShire, or howsoever called), actually _ruling_ each his section ofthe country, --and possessing (it must be said) in the lump, or whenassembled as a Council, uncommon patience, devoutness, probity, discretion and good fortune, --that the said Parliament ever came to begood for much? In that case it will not be easy to "imitate" the EnglishParliament; and the ballot-box and suffrage will be the mere bow ofRobin Hood, which it is given to very few to bend, or shoot with toany perfection. And if the Peers become mere big Capitalists, RailwayDirectors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings of Scrip, _without_ lordly quality, or other virtue except cash; and the Mitred Abbots change to mereAble-Editors, masters of Parliamentary Eloquence, Doctors ofPolitical Economy, and such like; and all _have_ to be elected by auniversal-suffrage ballot-box, --I do not see how the English Parliamentitself will long continue sea-worthy! Nay, I find England in her ownbig dumb heart, wherever you come upon her in a silent meditative hour, begins to have dreadful misgivings about it. 

The model of the world, then, is at once unattainable by the world, andnot much worth attaining? England, as I read the omens, is now called asecond time to "show the Nations how to live;" for by her Parliament, as chief governing entity, I fear she is not long for this world! PoorEngland must herself again, in these new strange times, the old methodsbeing quite worn out, "learn how to live. " That now is the terribleproblem for England, as for all the Nations; and she alone of all, not_yet_ sunk into open Anarchy, but left with time for repentance andamendment; she, wealthiest of all in material resource, in spiritualenergy, in ancient loyalty to law, and in the qualities that yield suchloyalty, --she perhaps alone of all may be able, with huge travail, andthe strain of all her faculties, to accomplish some solution. She willhave to try it, she has now to try it; she must accomplish it, or perishfrom her place in the world!

England, as I persuade myself, still contains in it many _kings_;possesses, as old Rome did, many men not needing "election" to command, but eternally elected for it by the Maker Himself. England's one hopeis in these, just now. They are among the silent, I believe; mostly faraway from platforms and public palaverings; not speaking forth the imageof their nobleness in transitory words, but imprinting it, each on hisown little section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiantactions, that will endure forevermore. They must sit silent no longer. They are summoned to assert themselves; to act forth, and articulatelyvindicate, in the teeth of howling multitudes, of a world too justly_maddened_ into all manner of delirious clamors, what of wisdom theyderive from God. England, and the Eternal Voices, summon them; poorEngland never so needed them as now. Up, be doing everywhere: the hourof crisis has verily come! In all sections of English life, the god-made_king_ is needed; is pressingly demanded in most; in some, cannotlonger, without peril as of conflagration, be dispensed with. He, wheresoever he finds himself, can say, "Here too am I wanted; here isthe kingdom I have to subjugate, and introduce God's Laws into, --God'sLaws, instead of Mammon's and M'Croudy's and the Old Anarch's! Here ismy work, here or nowhere. "--Are there many such, who will answer to thecall, in England? It turns on that, whether England, rapidly crumblingin these very years and months, shall go down to the Abyss as herneighbors have all done, or survive to new grander destinies _without_solution of continuity! Probably the chief question of the world atpresent. 

The true "commander" and king; he who knows for himself the divineAppointments of this Universe, the Eternal Laws ordained by God theMaker, in conforming to which lies victory and felicity, in departingfrom which lies, and forever must lie, sorrow and defeat, for each andall of the Posterity of Adam in every time and every place; he who hassworn fealty to these, and dare alone against the world assert these, and dare not with the whole world at his back deflect from these;--he, I know too well, is a rare man. Difficult to discover; not quitediscoverable, I apprehend, by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and riddlingof the popular clamor according to the most approved methods. He is notsold at any shop I know of, --though sometimes, as at the sign of theBallot-box, he is advertised for sale. Difficult indeed to discover:and not very much assisted, or encouraged in late times, to discover_himself_;--which, I think, might be a kind of help? Encouraged rather, and commanded in all ways, if he be wise, to _hide_ himself, andgive place to the windy Counterfeit of himself; such as the universalsuffrages can recognize, such as loves the most sweet voices of theuniversal suffrages!--O Peter, what becomes of such a People; what canbecome?

Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that fateful HebrewProphecy, I think the fatefulest of all, which sounds daily throughthe streets, "Ou' clo! Ou' clo!"--A certain People, once upon a time, clamorously voted by overwhelming majority, "Not _he_; Barabbas, nothe! _Him_, and what he is, and what he deserves, we know well enough:a reviler of the Chief Priests and sacred Chancery wigs; a seditiousHeretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind:To the gallows and the cross with him! Barabbas is our man; Barabbas, weare for Barabbas!" They got Barabbas:--have you well considered whata fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque _flunkyism_ grown truculent andtranscendent; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for theeternal noblenesses; sordid loyalty to the prosperous Semblances, andhigh-treason against the Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens in thesenatures? For it was the consummation of a long series of such; they andtheir fathers had long kept voting so. A singular People; who could bothproduce such divine men, and then could so stone and crucify them; aPeople terrible from the beginning!--Well, they got Barabbas; and theygot, of course, such guidance as Barabbas and the like of him could givethem; and, of course, they stumbled ever downwards and devilwards, intheir truculent stiffnecked way; and--and, at this hour, after eighteencenturies of sad fortune, they prophetically sing "Ou' clo!" in all thecities of the world. Might the world, at this late hour, but take noteof them, and understand their song a little!

Yes, there are some things the universal suffrage can decide, --and aboutthese it will be exceedingly useful to consult the universal suffrage:but in regard to most things of importance, and in regard to the choiceof men especially, there is (astonishing as it may seem) next to nocapability on the part of universal suffrage. --I request all candidpersons, who have never so little originality of mind, and every man hasa little, to consider this. If true, it involves such a change in ournow fashionable modes of procedure as fills me with astonishment andalarm. _If_ popular suffrage is not the way of ascertaining what theLaws of the Universe are, and who it is that will best guide us inthe way of these, --then woe is to us if we do not take another method. Delolme on the British Constitution will not save us; deaf will theParcae be to votes of the House, to leading articles, constitutionalphilosophies. The other method--alas, it involves a stopping short, orvital change of direction, in the glorious career which all Europe, withshouts heaven-high, is now galloping along: and that, happen when itmay, will, to many of us, be probably a rather surprising business!

One thing I do know, and can again assert with great confidence, supported by the whole Universe, and by some two hundred generations ofmen, who have left us some record of themselves there, That the few Wisewill have, by one method or another, to take command of the innumerableFoolish; that they must be got to take it;--and that, in fact, sinceWisdom, which means also Valor and heroic Nobleness, is alone strong inthis world, and one wise man is stronger than all men unwise, they canbe got. That they must take it; and having taken, must keep it, and dotheir God's Message in it, and defend the same, at their life's peril, against all men and devils. This I do clearly believe to be the backboneof all Future Society, as it has been of all Past; and that without it, there is no Society possible in the world. And what a business _this_will be, before it end in some degree of victory again, and whether thetime for shouts of triumph and tremendous cheers upon it is yet come, ornot yet by a great way, I perceive too well! A business to make us allvery serious indeed. A business not to be accomplished but by noblemanhood, and devout all-daring, all-enduring loyalty to Heaven, such asfatally _sleeps_ at present, --such as is not _dead_ at present either, unless the gods have doomed this world of theirs to die! A businesswhich long centuries of faithful travail and heroic agony, on the partof all the noble that are born to us, will not end; and which to us, ofthis "tremendous cheering" century, it were blessedness very great tosee successfully begun. Begun, tried by all manner of methods, if thereis one wise Statesman or man left among us, it verily must be;--begun, successfully or unsuccessfully, we do hope to see it!

In all European countries, especially in England, one class of Captainsand commanders of men, recognizable as the beginning of a new realand not imaginary "Aristocracy, " has already in some measure developeditself: the Captains of Industry;--happily the class who above all, orat least first of all, are wanted in this time. In the doing of materialwork, we have already men among us that can command bodies of men. And surely, on the other hand, there is no lack of men needing to becommanded: the sad class of brother-men whom we had to describe as"Hodge's emancipated horses, " reduced to roving famine, --this too has inall countries developed itself; and, in fatal geometrical progression, is ever more developing itself, with a rapidity which alarms every one. On this ground, if not on all manner of other grounds, it may be trulysaid, the "Organization of Labor" (_not_ organizable by the mad methodstried hitherto) is the universal vital Problem of the world. 

To bring these hordes of outcast captainless soldiers under duecaptaincy? This is really the question of questions; on the answerto which turns, among other things, the fate of all Governments, constitutional and other, --the possibility of their continuing to exist, or the impossibility. Captainless, uncommanded, these wretched outcast"soldiers, " since they cannot starve, must needs become banditti, street-barricaders, --destroyers of every Government that _cannot_ putthem under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short renderlife human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws, which we once piquedourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently fast breaking down. Ireland, now admitted into the Idle Workhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces. That never was a "human" destiny for any honest son of Adam; nowhere butin England could it have lasted at all; and now, with Ireland sharerin it, and the fulness of time come, it is as good as ended. Alas, yes. Here in Connemara, your crazy Ship of the State, otherwise dreadfullyrotten in many of its timbers I believe, has sprung a leak: spite ofall hands at the pump, the water is rising; the Ship, I perceive, willfounder, if you cannot stop this leak!

To bring these Captainless under due captaincy? The anxious thoughts ofall men that do think are turned upon that question; and their efforts, though as yet blindly and to no purpose, under the multifariousimpediments and obscurations, all point thitherward. Isolated men, and their vague efforts, cannot do it. Government everywhere is calledupon, --in England as loudly as elsewhere, --to give the initiative. Anew strange task of these new epochs; which no Government, neverso "constitutional, " can escape from undertaking. For it is vitallynecessary to the existence of Society itself; it must be undertaken, andsucceeded in too, or worse will follow, --and, as we already see in IrishConnaught and some other places, will follow soon. To whateverthing still calls itself by the name of Government, were it never soconstitutional and impeded by official impossibilities, all men willnaturally look for help, and direction what to do, in this extremity. If help or direction is not given; if the thing called Government merelydrift and tumble to and fro, no-whither, on the popular vortexes, likesome carcass of a drowned ass, constitutionally put "at the top ofaffairs, " popular indignation will infallibly accumulate upon it; oneday, the popular lightning, descending forked and horrible from theblack air, will annihilate said supreme carcass, and smite it hometo its native ooze again!--Your Lordship, this is too true, thoughirreverently spoken: indeed one knows not how to speak of it; and to meit is infinitely sad and miserable, spoken or not!--Unless perhaps theVoluntary Principle will still help us through? Perhaps this Irish leak, in such a rotten distressed condition of the Ship, with all the crew soanxious about it, will be kind enough to stop of itself?--

Dismiss that hope, your Lordship! Let all real and imaginary Governorsof England, at the pass we have arrived at, dismiss forever thatfallacious fatal solace to their do-nothingism: of itself, too clearly, the leak will never stop; by human skill and energy it must be stopped, or there is nothing but the sea-bottom for us all! A Chief Governor ofEngland really ought to recognize his situation; to discern that, doingnothing, and merely drifting to and fro, in however constitutional amanner, he is a squanderer of precious moments, moments that perhaps arepriceless; a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, to a Chief Governorof England, worthy of that high name, --surely to him, as to everyliving man, in every conceivable situation short of the Kingdom of theDead--there is _something_ possible; some plan of action other than thatof standing mildly, with crossed arms, till he and we--sink? Complex ashis situation is, he, of all Governors now extant among these distractedNations, has, as I compute, by far the greatest possibilities. TheCaptains, actual or potential, are there, and the million Captainless:and such resources for bringing them together as no other has. To theseoutcast soldiers of his, unregimented roving banditti for the present, or unworking workhouse prisoners who are almost uglier than banditti;to these floods of Irish Beggars, Able-bodied Paupers, and nomadicLackalls, now stagnating or roaming everywhere, drowning the face of theworld (too truly) into an untenantable swamp and Stygian quagmire, hasthe Chief Governor of this country no word whatever to say? Nothing but"Rate in aid, " "Time will mend it, " "Necessary business of the Session;"and "After me the Deluge"? A Chief Governor that can front his Irishdifficulty, and steadily contemplate the horoscope of Irish and BritishPauperism, and whitherward it is leading him and us, in this humor, mustbe a--What shall we call such a Chief Governor? Alas, in spite of olduse and wont, --little other than a tolerated Solecism, growing dailymore intolerable! He decidedly ought to have some word to say on thismatter, --to be incessantly occupied in getting something which he couldpractically say!--Perhaps to the following, or a much finer effect?

_Speech of the British Prime-Minister to the floods of Irish and otherBeggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary, and thegeneral assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the Pauper Populations of theseRealms_. 

"Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you, criminal many of you, miserableall; the sight of you fills me with astonishment and despair. What todo with you I know not; long have I been meditating, and it is hard totell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count: so many of youfallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful tothink, every new unit that falls is _loading_ so much more the chainthat drags the others over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncountedmillions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day. They hangthere on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselves down, holdingon with all their strength; but falling, falling one after another; andthe chain is getting _heavy_, so that ever more fall; and who at lastwill stand? What to do with you? The question, What to do with you?especially since the potato died, is like to break my heart!

"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered, and nowknow for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam abroad in thisunguided manner, stumbling over the precipices, and loading ever heavierthe fatal _chain_ upon those who might be able to stand; that thisof locking you up in temporary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, andsubsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth again on freshroamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil;--thatthis is _not_ the plan; and that it never was, or could out of Englandhave been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

"Vagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, all this that has been sung andspoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement, emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty over the world, is little otherthan sad temporary jargon, brought upon us by a stern necessity, --butnow ordered by a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sadtemporary jargon, I say: made up of sense and nonsense, --sense in smallquantities, and nonsense in very large;--and, if taken for the wholeor permanent truth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinitenonsense eternally _untrue_. All men, I think, will soon have to quitthis, to consider this as a thing pretty well achieved; and to look outtowards another thing much more needing achievement at the time that nowis. 

"All men will have to quit it, I believe. But to you, my indigentfriends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived! To talk ofglorious self-government, of suffrages and hustings, and the fightof freedom and such like, is a vain thing in your case. By all humandefinitions and conceptions of the said fight of freedom, you for yourpart have lost it, and can fight no more. Glorious self-government isa glory not for you, not for Hodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No; Isay, No. You, for your part, have tried it, and _failed_. Left to walkyour own road, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, your short sight couldnot descry the pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press has whirled youhither and thither, regardless of your struggles and your shrieks; andhere at last you lie; fallen flat into the ditch, drowning there anddying, unless the others that are still standing please to pick youup. The others that still stand have their own difficulties, I can tellyou!--But you, by imperfect energy and redundant appetite, by doing toolittle work and drinking too much beer, you (I bid you observe) haveproved that you cannot do it! You lie there plainly in the ditch. AndI am to pick you up again, on these mad terms; help you ever again, aswith our best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the godshave made impossible? To load the fatal _chain_ with your perpetualstaggerings and sprawlings; and ever again load it, till we all liesprawling? My indigent incompetent friends, I will not! Know that, whoever may be 'sons of freedom, ' you for your part are not and cannotbe such. Not 'free' you, I think, whoever may be free. You palpably arefallen captive, --_caitiff_, as they once named it:--you do, silentlybut eloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that some genuinecommand be taken of you. 

"Yes, my indigent incompetent friends; some genuine practical command. Such, --if I rightly interpret those mad Chartisms, Repeal Agitations, Red Republics, and other delirious inarticulate howlings and bellowingswhich all the populations of the world now utter, evidently cries ofpain on their and your part, --is the demand which you, Captives, make ofall men that are not Captive, but are still Free. Free men, --alas, had you ever any notion who the free men were, who the not-free, theincapable of freedom! The free men, if you could have understood it, they are the wise men; the patient, self-denying, valiant; the Noblesof the World; who can discern the Law of this Universe, what it is, andpiously _obey_ it; these, in late sad times, having cast you loose, youare fallen captive to greedy sons of profit-and-loss; to bad and ever toworse; and at length to Beer and the Devil. Algiers, Brazil or Dahomeyhold nothing in them so authentically _slave_ as you are, my indigentincompetent friends!

"Good Heavens, and I have to raise some eight or nine millions annually, six for England itself, and to wreck the morals of my working populationbeyond all money's worth, to keep the life from going out of you: asmall service to you, as I many times bitterly repeat! Alas, yes; beforehigh Heaven I must declare it such. I think the old Spartans, who wouldhave killed you instead, had shown more 'humanity, ' more of manhood, than I thus do! More humanity, I say, more of manhood, and of sense forwhat the dignity of man demands imperatively of you and of me and of usall. We call it charity, beneficence, and other fine names, this brutishWorkhouse Scheme of ours; and it is but sluggish heartlessness, andinsincerity, and cowardly lowness of soul. Not 'humanity' or manhood, I think; perhaps _ape_hood rather, --paltry imitancy, from the teethoutward, of what our heart never felt nor our understanding ever saw;dim indolent adherence to extraneous and extinct traditions; traditionsnow really about extinct; not living now to almost any of us, and stillhaunting with their spectralities and gibbering _ghosts_ (in a trulybaleful manner) almost all of us! Making this our struggling 'TwelfthHour of the Night' inexpressibly hideous!--

"But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have to repeat withsorrow, but with perfect clearness, what is plainly undeniable, and iseven clamorous to get itself admitted, that you are of the nature ofslaves, --or if you prefer the word, of _nomadic, and now even vagrantand vagabond, servants that can find no master on those terms_;which seems to me a much uglier word. Emancipation? You have been'emancipated' with a vengeance! Foolish souls, I say the whole worldcannot emancipate you. Fealty to ignorant Unruliness, to gluttonoussluggish Improvidence, to the Beer-pot and the Devil, who is there thatcan emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole Reform Bill, awhole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone: nothing but Godthe Maker can emancipate him, by making him anew. 

"To forward which glorious consummation, will it not be well, O indigentfriends, that you, fallen flat there, shall henceforth learn to takeadvice of others as to the methods of standing? Plainly I let you know, and all the world and the worlds know, that I for my part mean it so. Not as glorious unfortunate sons of freedom, but as recognized captives, as unfortunate fallen brothers requiring that I should command you, andif need were, control and compel you, can there henceforth be a relationbetween us. Ask me not for Indian meal; you shall be compelled to earnit first; know that on other terms I will not give you any. BeforeHeaven and Earth, and God the Maker of us all, I declare it is a scandalto see _such_ a life kept in you, by the sweat and heart's-blood of yourbrothers; and that, if we cannot mend it, death were preferable! Go to, we must get out of this--unutterable coil of nonsenses, constitutional, philanthropical, &c. , in which (surely without mutual hatred, if withless of 'love' than is supposed) we are all strangling one another!Your want of wants, I say, is that you be _commanded_ in this world, not being able to command yourselves. Know therefore that it shall beso with you. Nomadism, I give you notice, has ended; needful permanency, soldier-like obedience, and the opportunity and the necessity of hardsteady labor for your living, have begun. Know that the Idle Workhouseis shut against you henceforth; you cannot enter there at will, norleave at will; you shall enter a quite other Refuge, under conditionsstrict as soldiering, and not leave till I have done with you. He thatprefers the glorious (or perhaps even the rebellious _in_glorious)'career of freedom, ' let him prove that he can travel there, and be themaster of himself; and right good speed to him. He who has proved thathe cannot travel there or be the master of himself, --let him, in thename of all the gods, become a servant, and accept the just rules ofservitude!

"Arise, enlist in my Irish, my Scotch and English 'Regiments of the NewEra, '--which I have been concocting, day and night, during these threeGrouse-seasons (taking earnest incessant counsel, with all manner ofIndustrial Notabilities and men of insight, on the matter), and have nowbrought to a kind of preparation for incipiency, thank Heaven! Enlistthere, ye poor wandering banditti; obey, work, suffer, abstain, as allof us have had to do: so shall you be useful in God's creation, so shallyou be helped to gain a manful living for yourselves; not otherwise thanso. Industrial Regiments [_Here numerous persons, with big wigs manyof them, and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the DismalScience, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Premierresolutely beckons them down again_]--Regiments not to fight the Frenchor others, who are peaceable enough towards us; but to fight the Bogsand Wildernesses at home and abroad, and to chain the Devils of the Pitwhich are walking too openly among us. 

"Work, for you? Work, surely, is not quite undiscoverable in an Earthso wide as ours, if we will take the right methods for it! Indigentfriends, we will adopt this new relation (which is _old_ as the world);this will lead us towards such. Rigorous conditions, not to be violatedon either side, lie in this relation; conditions planted there by GodHimself; which woe will betide us if we do not discover, gradually moreand more discover, and conform to! Industrial Colonels, Workmasters, Task-masters, Life-commanders, equitable as Rhadamanthus and inflexibleas he: such, I perceive, you do need; and such, you being once put underlaw as soldiers are, will be discoverable for you. I perceive, withboundless alarm, that I shall have to set about discovering such, --I, since I am at the top of affairs, with all men looking to me. Alas, itis my new task in this New Era; and God knows, I too, little other thana red-tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquencehitherto, am far behind with it! But street-barricades rise everywhere:the hour of Fate has come. In Connemara there has sprung a leak, sincethe potato died; Connaught, if it were not for Treasury-grants andrates-in-aid, would have to recur to Cannibalism even now, and HumanSociety would cease to pretend that it existed there. Done this thingmust be. Alas, I perceive that if I cannot do it, then surely I shalldie, and perhaps shall not have Christian burial! But I already raisenear upon Ten Millions for feeding you in idleness, my nomadic friends;work, under due regulations, I really might try to get of--[_Herearises indescribable uproar, no longer repressible, from all mannerof Economists, Emancipationists, Constitutionalists, and miscellaneousProfessors of the Dismal Science, pretty numerously scattered about;and cries of "Private enterprise, " "Rights of Capital, " "VoluntaryPrinciple, " "Doctrines of the British Constitution, " swollen by thegeneral assenting hum of all the world, quite drown the Chief Ministerfor a while. He, with invincible resolution, persists; obtains hearingagain_:]

"Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science, soft you a little. Alas, I know what you would say. For my sins, I have read much in thoseinimitable volumes of yours, --really I should think, some barrowfuls ofthem in my time, --and, in these last forty years of theory and practice, have pretty well seized what of Divine Message you were sent with to me. Perhaps as small a message, give me leave to say, as ever there wassuch a noise made about before. Trust me, I have not forgotten it, shallnever forget it. Those Laws of the Shop-till are indisputable to me;and practically useful in certain departments of the Universe, as themultiplication-table itself. Once I even tried to sail through theImmensities with them, and to front the big coming Eternities with them;but I found it would not do. As the Supreme Rule of Statesmanship, orGovernment of Men, --since this Universe is not wholly a Shop, --no. Yourejoice in my improved tariffs, free-trade movements and the like, onevery hand; for which be thankful, and even sing litanies if you choose. But here at last, in the Idle-Workhouse movement, --unexampled yet onEarth or in the waters under the Earth, --I am fairly brought to a stand;and have had to make reflections, of the most alarming, and indeedawful, and as it were religious nature! Professors of the DismalScience, I perceive that the length of your tether is now pretty wellrun; and that I must request you to talk a little lower in future. Bythe side of the shop-till, --see, your small 'Law of God' is hung up, along with the multiplication-table itself. But beyond and above theshop-till, allow me to say, you shall as good as hold your peace. Respectable Professors, I perceive it is not now the Gigantic Hucksters, but it is the Immortal Gods, yes they, in their terror and their beauty, in their wrath and their beneficence, that are coming into play in theaffairs of this world! Soft you a little. Do not you interrupt me, buttry to understand and help me!--

--"Work, was I saying? My indigent unguided friends, I should think somework might be discoverable for you. Enlist, stand drill; become, from anomadic Banditti of Idleness, Soldiers of Industry! I will lead you tothe Irish Bogs, to the vacant desolations of Connaught now falling intoCannibalism, to mistilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I will lead you: to the English fox-covers, furze-grown Commons, NewForests, Salisbury Plains: likewise to the Scotch Hill-sides, and barerushy slopes, which as yet feed only sheep, --moist uplands, thousands ofsquare miles in extent, which are destined yet to grow green crops, andfresh butter and milk and beef without limit (wherein no 'Foreigner cancompete with us'), were the Glasgow sewers once opened on them, and youwith your Colonels carried thither. In the Three Kingdoms, or in theForty Colonies, depend upon it, you shall be led to your work!

"To each of you I will then say: Here is work for you; strike into itwith manlike, soldier-like obedience and heartiness, according to themethods here prescribed, --wages follow for you without difficulty; allmanner of just remuneration, and at length emancipation itself follows. Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labor, disobey the rules, --Iwill admonish and endeavor to incite you; if in vain, I will flog you;if still in vain, I will at last shoot you, --and make God's Earth, andthe forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you. Understand it, I adviseyou! The Organization of Labor"--[_Left speaking_, says our reporter. ]

"Left speaking:" alas, that he should have to "speak" so much! There arethings that should be done, not spoken; that till the doing of them isbegun, cannot well be spoken. He may have to "speak" seven years yet, before a spade be struck into the Bog of Allen; and then perhaps it willbe too late!--

You perceive, my friends, we have actually got into the "New Era" therehas been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived at last;--andit is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey we were ledto expect! Very much the reverse. A terrible _new_ country this: noneighbors in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby monsters(philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyenas, laughing hyenas, predatory wolves; probably _devils_, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yellow)devils, as St. Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge untroddenhaggard country, the "chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;" a countryof savage glaciers, granite mountains, of foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs;--which we shall have our own ados to make arable andhabitable, I think! We must stick by it, however;--of all enterprisesthe impossiblest is that of getting out of it, and shifting intoanother. To work, then, one and all; hands to work!

No. II. MODEL PRISONS. [March 1, 1850. ]

The deranged condition of our affairs is a universal topic among men atpresent; and the heavy miseries pressing, in their rudest shape, on thegreat dumb inarticulate class, and from this, by a sure law, spreadingupwards, in a less palpable but not less certain and perhaps still morefatal shape on all classes to the very highest, are admitted everywhereto be great, increasing and now almost unendurable. How to diminishthem, --this is every man's question. For in fact they do imperativelyneed diminution; and unless they can be diminished, there are many otherthings that cannot very long continue to exist beside them. A seriousquestion indeed, How to diminish them!

Among the articulate classes, as they may be called, there are two waysof proceeding in regard to this. One large body of the intelligentand influential, busied mainly in personal affairs, accepts the socialiniquities, or whatever you may call them, and the miseries consequentthereupon; accepts them, admits them to be extremely miserable, pronounces them entirely inevitable, incurable except by Heaven, andeats its pudding with as little thought of them as possible. Not a verynoble class of citizens these; not a very hopeful or salutary method ofdealing with social iniquities this of theirs, however it may answer inrespect to themselves and their personal affairs! But now there is theselect small minority, in whom some sentiment of public spirit and humanpity still survives, among whom, or not anywhere, the Good Cause mayexpect to find soldiers and servants: their method of proceeding, inthese times, is also very strange. They embark in the "philanthropicmovement;" they calculate that the miseries of the world can be cured bybringing the philanthropic movement to bear on them. To universal publicmisery, and universal neglect of the clearest public duties, let privatecharity superadd itself: there will thus be some balance restored, andmaintained again; thus, --or by what conceivable method? On these termsthey, for their part, embark in the sacred cause; resolute to cure aworld's woes by rose-water; desperately bent on trying to the uttermostthat mild method. It seems not to have struck these good men that noworld, or thing here below, ever fell into misery, without having firstfallen into folly, into sin against the Supreme Ruler of it, by adoptingas a law of conduct what was not a law, but the reverse of one; andthat, till its folly, till its sin be cast out of it, there is not thesmallest hope of its misery going, --that not for all the charity androse-water in the world will its misery try to go till then!

This is a sad error; all the sadder as it is the error chiefly of themore humane and noble-minded of our generation; among whom, as wesaid, or elsewhere not at all, the cause of real Reform must expect itsservants. At present, and for a long while past, whatsoever young soulawoke in England with some disposition towards generosity and socialheroism, or at lowest with some intimation of the beauty of sucha disposition, --he, in whom the poor world might have looked for aReformer, and valiant mender of its foul ways, was almost sure to becomea Philanthropist, reforming merely by this rose-water method. To admitthat the world's ways are foul, and not the ways of God the Maker, butof Satan the Destroyer, many of them, and that they must be mended orwe all die; that if huge misery prevails, huge cowardice, falsity, disloyalty, universal Injustice high and low, have still longerprevailed, and must straightway try to cease prevailing: this is whatno visible reformer has yet thought of doing: All so-called "reforms"hitherto are grounded either on openly admitted egoism (cheap bread tothe cotton-spinner, voting to those that have no vote, and the like), which does not point towards very celestial developments of theReform movement; or else upon this of remedying social injustices byindiscriminate contributions of philanthropy, a method surely still moreunpromising. Such contributions, being indiscriminate, are but a newinjustice; these will never lead to reform, or abolition of injustice, whatever else they lead to!

Not by that method shall we "get round Cape Horn, " by never suchunanimity of voting, under the most approved Phantasm Captains! It ismiserable to see. Having, as it were, quite lost our way round CapeHorn, and being sorely "admonished" by the Iceberg and other dumbcouncillors, the pilots, --instead of taking to their sextants, andasking with a seriousness unknown for a long while, What the Laws ofwind and water, and of Earth and of Heaven are, --decide that now, inthese new circumstances, they will, to the worthy and unworthy, serveout a double allowance of grog. In this way they hope to do it, --bysteering on the old wrong tack, and serving out more and more, copiously what little _aqua vitae_ may be still on board! Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity for human calamity is very beautiful; but thedeep oblivion of the Law of Right and Wrong; this "indiscriminatemashing up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle" of thePhilanthropic movement, is by no means beautiful; this, on the contrary, is altogether ugly and alarming. 

Truly if there be not something inarticulate among us, not yet utteredbut pressing towards utterance, which is much wiser than anything wehave lately articulated or brought into word or action, our outlooks arerather lamentable. The great majority of the powerful and active-minded, sunk in egoistic scepticisms, busied in chase of lucre, pleasure, andmere vulgar objects, looking with indifference on the world's woes, andpassing carelessly by on the other side; and the select minority, ofwhom better might have been expected, bending all their strength to curethem by methods which can only make bad worse, and in the endrender cure hopeless. A blind loquacious pruriency of indiscriminatePhilanthropism substituting itself, with much self-laudation, for thesilent divinely awful sense of Right and Wrong;--testifying too clearlythat here is no longer a divine sense of Right and Wrong; that, inthe smoke of this universal, and alas inevitable and indispensablerevolutionary fire, and burning up of worn-out rags of which the worldis full, our life-atmosphere has (for the time) become one vile Londonfog, and the eternal loadstars are gone out for us! Gone out;--yet veryvisible if you can get above the fog; still there in their place, and quite the same as they always were! To whoever does still know ofloadstars, the proceedings, which expand themselves daily, ofthese sublime philanthropic associations, and "universalsluggard-and-scoundrel protection-societies, " are a perpetualaffliction. With their emancipations and abolition principles, andreigns of brotherhood and new methods of love, they have done greatthings in the White and in the Black World, during late years; and arepreparing for greater. 

In the interest of human reform, if there is ever to be any reform, andreturn to prosperity or to the possibility of prospering, it is urgentthat the nonsense of all this (and it is mostly nonsense, but not quite)should be sent about its business straightway, and forbidden to deceivethe well-meaning souls among us any more. Reform, if we will understandthat divine word, cannot begin till then. One day, I do know, this, asis the doom of all nonsense, will be drummed out of the world, with dueplacard stuck on its back, and the populace flinging dead cats at it:but whether soon or not, is by no means so certain. I rather guess, _not_ at present, not quite soon. Fraternity, in other countries, hasgone on, till it found itself unexpectedly manipulating guillotines byits chosen Robespierres, and become a fraternity like Cain's. Muchto its amazement! For in fact it is not all nonsense; there is aninfinitesimal fraction of sense in it withal; which is so difficultto disengage;--which must be disengaged, and laid hold of, beforeFraternity can vanish. 

But to our subject, --the Model Prison, and the strange theory of lifenow in action there. That, for the present, is my share in the wideadventure of Philanthropism; the world's share, and how and when it isto be liquidated and ended, rests with the Supreme Destinies. 

Several months ago, some friends took me with them to see one of theLondon Prisons; a Prison of the exemplary or model kind. An immensecircuit of buildings; cut out, girt with a high ring-wall, from thelanes and streets of the quarter, which is a dim and crowded one. Gateway as to a fortified place; then a spacious court, like the squareof a city; broad staircases, passages to interior courts; fronts ofstately architecture all round. It lodges some thousand or twelvehundred prisoners, besides the officers of the establishment. Surely oneof the most perfect buildings, within the compass of London. We lookedat the apartments, sleeping-cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms, generalcourts or special and private: excellent all, the ne-plus-ultra of humancare and ingenuity; in my life I never saw so clean a building; probablyno Duke in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and thoroughcleanness. 

The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food, intheir respective cooking-places, we tasted: found them of excellencesuperlative. The prisoners sat at work, light work, picking oakum, andthe like, in airy apartments with glass roofs, of agreeable temperatureand perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing only by secretsigns: others were out, taking their hour of promenade in clean flaggedcourts: methodic composure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesomecomfort reigned everywhere supreme. The women in other apartments, some notable murderesses among them, all in the like state of methodiccomposure and substantial wholesome comfort, sat sewing: in long rangesof wash-houses, drying-houses and whatever pertains to the getting-upof clean linen, were certain others, with all conceivable mechanicalfurtherances, not too arduously working. The notable murderesses were, though with great precautions of privacy, pointed out to us; and we wererequested not to look openly at them, or seem to notice them at all, as it was found to "cherish their vanity" when visitors looked at them. Schools too were there; intelligent teachers of both sexes, studiouslyinstructing the still ignorant of these thieves. 

From an inner upper room or gallery, we looked down into a range ofprivate courts, where certain Chartist Notabilities were undergoingtheir term. Chartist Notability First struck me very much; I had seenhim about a year before, by involuntary accident and much to my disgust, magnetizing a silly young person; and had noted well the unlovelyvoracious look of him, his thick oily skin, his heavy dull-burning eyes, his greedy mouth, the dusky potent insatiable animalism that lookedout of every feature of him: a fellow adequate to animal-magnetize mostthings, I did suppose;--and here was the post I now found him arrivedat. Next neighbor to him was Notability Second, a philosophic orliterary Chartist; walking rapidly to and fro in his private court, aclean, high-walled place; the world and its cares quite excluded, forsome months to come: master of his own time and spiritual resources to, as I supposed, a really enviable extent. What "literary man" to an equalextent! I fancied I, for my own part, so left with paper and ink, andall taxes and botherations shut out from me, could have written such aBook as no reader will here ever get of me. Never, O reader, never herein a mere house with taxes and botherations. Here, alas, one has tosnatch one's poor Book, bit by bit, as from a conflagration; and tothink and live, comparatively, as if the house were not one's own, butmainly the world's and the devil's. Notability Second might have filledone with envy. 

The Captain of the place, a gentleman of ancient Military or Royal-Navyhabits, was one of the most perfect governors; professionally and bynature zealous for cleanliness, punctuality, good order of every kind;a humane heart and yet a strong one; soft of speech and manner, yet withan inflexible rigor of command, so far as his limits went: "iron handin a velvet glove, " as Napoleon defined it. A man of real worth, challenging at once love and respect: the light of those mild brighteyes seemed to permeate the place as with an all-pervading vigilance, and kindly yet victorious illumination; in the soft definite voice itwas as if Nature herself were promulgating her orders, gentlest mildestorders, which however, in the end, there would be no disobeying, whichin the end there would be no living without fulfilment of. A true"aristos, " and commander of men. A man worthy to have commanded andguided forward, in good ways, twelve hundred of the best common-peoplein London or the world: he was here, for many years past, giving allhis care and faculty to command, and guide forward in such ways as therewere, twelve hundred of the worst. I looked with considerable admirationon this gentleman; and with considerable astonishment, the reverse ofadmiration, on the work he had here been set upon. 

This excellent Captain was too old a Commander to complain of anything;indeed he struggled visibly the other way, to find in his own mind thatall here was best; but I could sufficiently discern that, in his naturalinstincts, if not mounting up to the region of his thoughts, there wasa continual protest going on against much of it; that nature and all hisinarticulate persuasion (however much forbidden to articulate itself)taught him the futility and unfeasibility of the system followed here. The Visiting Magistrates, he gently regretted rather than complained, had lately taken his tread-wheel from him, men were just now pullingit down; and how he was henceforth to enforce discipline on these badsubjects, was much a difficulty with him. "They cared for nothing butthe tread-wheel, and for having their rations cut short:" of the twosole penalties, hard work and occasional hunger, there remained now onlyone, and that by no means the better one, as he thought. The "sympathy"of visitors, too, their "pity" for his interesting scoundrel-subjects, though he tried to like it, was evidently no joy to this practical mind. Pity, yes: but pity for the scoundrel-species? For those who will nothave pity on themselves, and will force the Universe and the Lawsof Nature to have no "pity on" them? Meseems I could discover fitterobjects of pity!

In fact it was too clear, this excellent man had got a field for hisfaculties which, in several respects, was by no means the suitable one. To drill twelve hundred scoundrels by "the method of kindness, " and ofabolishing your very tread-wheel, --how could any commander rejoice tohave such a work cut out for him? You had but to look in the faces ofthese twelve hundred, and despair, for most part, of ever "commanding"them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality; ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces; degraded underfootperverse creatures, sons of _in_docility, greedy mutinous darkness, and in one word, of STUPIDITY, which is the general mother of such. Stupidity intellectual and stupidity moral (for the one always meansthe other, as you will, with surprise or not, discover if you look)had borne this progeny: base-natured beings, on whom in the course ofa maleficent subterranean life of London Scoundrelism, the Geniusof Darkness (called Satan, Devil, and other names) had now visiblyimpressed his seal, and had marked them out as soldiers of Chaos and ofhim, --appointed to serve in _his_ Regiments, First of the line, Secondditto, and so on in their order. Him, you could perceive, they wouldserve; but not easily another than him. These were the subjects whom ourbrave Captain and Prison-Governor was appointed to command, andreclaim to _other_ service, by "the method of love, " with a tread-wheelabolished. 

Hopeless forevermore such a project. These abject, ape, wolf, ox, impand other diabolic-animal specimens of humanity, who of the very godscould ever have commanded them by love? A collar round the neck, and acart-whip flourished over the back; these, in a just and steady humanhand, were what the gods would have appointed them; and now when, bylong misconduct and neglect, they had sworn themselves into the Devil'sregiments of the line, and got the seal of Chaos impressed on theirvisage, it was very doubtful whether even these would be of avail forthe unfortunate commander of twelve hundred men! By "love, " without hopeexcept of peaceably teasing oakum, or fear except of a temporary lossof dinner, he was to guide these men, and wisely constrainthem, --whitherward? No-whither: that was his goal, if you will thinkwell of it; that was a second fundamental falsity in his problem. Falsein the warp and false in the woof, thought one of us; about as falsea problem as any I have seen a good man set upon lately! To guidescoundrels by "love;" that is a false woof, I take it, a method thatwill not hold together; hardly for the flower of men will love alone do;and for the sediment and scoundrelism of men it has not even a chanceto do. And then to guide any class of men, scoundrel or other, _No-whither_, which was this poor Captain's problem, in this Prison withoakum for its one element of hope or outlook, how can that prosper by"love" or by any conceivable method? That is a warp wholly false. Out ofwhich false warp, or originally false condition to start from, combinedand daily woven into by your false woof, or methods of "love" and suchlike, there arises for our poor Captain the falsest of problems, and fora man of his faculty the unfairest of situations. His problem was, notto command good men to do something, but bad men to do (with superficialdisguises) nothing. 

On the whole, what a beautiful Establishment here fitted up for theaccommodation of the scoundrel-world, male and female! As I said, noDuke in England is, for all rational purposes which a human being canor ought to aim at, lodged, fed, tended, taken care of, with suchperfection. Of poor craftsmen that pay rates and taxes from their day'swages, of the dim millions that toil and moil continually under thesun, we know what is the lodging and the tending. Of the Johnsons, Goldsmiths, lodged in their squalid garrets; working often enough amidfamine, darkness, tumult, dust and desolation, what work _they_ haveto do:--of these as of "spiritual backwoodsmen, " understood to bepreappointed to such a life, and like the pigs to killing, "quite usedto it, " I say nothing. But of Dukes, which Duke, I could ask, has cocoa, soup, meat, and food in general made ready, so fit for keeping himin health, in ability to do and to enjoy? Which Duke has a house sothoroughly clean, pure and airy; lives in an element so wholesome, andperfectly adapted to the uses of soul and body as this same, which isprovided here for the Devil's regiments of the line? No Duke that Ihave ever known. Dukes are waited on by deleterious French cooks, by perfunctory grooms of the chambers, and expensive crowds ofeye-servants, more imaginary than real: while here, Science, HumanIntellect and Beneficence have searched and sat studious, eager to dotheir very best; they have chosen a real Artist in Governing to seetheir best, in all details of it, done. Happy regiments of the line, what soldier to any earthly or celestial Power has such a lodging andattendance as you here? No soldier or servant direct or indirect ofGod or of man, in this England at present. Joy to you, regiments of theline. Your Master, I am told, has his Elect, and professes to be "Princeof the Kingdoms of this World;" and truly I see he has power to do agood turn to those he loves, in England at least. Shall we say, May_he_, may the Devil give you good of it, ye Elect of Scoundrelism? Iwill rather pass by, uttering no prayer at all; musing rather in silenceon the singular "worship of God, " or practical "reverence done toHuman Worth" (which is the outcome and essence of all real "worship"whatsoever) among the Posterity of Adam at this day. 

For all round this beautiful Establishment, or Oasis of Purity, intendedfor the Devil's regiments of the line, lay continents of dingy poorand dirty dwellings, where the unfortunate not _yet_ enlisted intothat Force were struggling manifoldly, --in their workshops, in theirmarble-yards and timber-yards and tan-yards, in their close cellars, cobbler-stalls, hungry garrets, and poor dark trade-shops withred-herrings and tobacco-pipes crossed in the window, --to keep the Devilout-of-doors, and not enlist with him. And it was by a tax on thesethat the Barracks for the regiments of the line were kept up. VisitingMagistrates, impelled by Exeter Hall, by Able-Editors, and thePhilanthropic Movement of the Age, had given orders to that effect. Rates on the poor servant of God and of her Majesty, who still servesboth in his way, painfully selling red-herrings; rates on him and hisred-herrings to boil right soup for the Devil's declared Elect! Neverin my travels, in any age or clime, had I fallen in with such VisitingMagistrates before. Reserved they, I should suppose, for these ultimateor penultimate ages of the world, rich in all prodigies, political, spiritual, --ages surely with such a length of ears as was neverparalleled before. 

If I had a commonwealth to reform or to govern, certainly it shouldnot be the Devil's regiments of the line that I would first of allconcentrate my attention on! With them I should be apt so make ratherbrief work; to them one would apply the besom, try to sweep _them_, withsome rapidity into the dust-bin, and well out of one's road, I shouldrather say. Fill your thrashing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them, --that is not the method to obtain sacksof wheat. Away, you; begone swiftly, _ye_ regiments of the line: in thename of God and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to it tolive in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree ofbrevity. To feed you in palaces, to hire captains and schoolmastersand the choicest spiritual and material artificers to expend theirindustries on you, No, by the Eternal! I have quite other work for thatclass of artists; Seven-and-twenty Millions of neglected mortals whohave not yet quite declared for the Devil. Mark it, my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on the backs of you, collars round the necks ofyou; and will teach you, after the example of the gods, that this worldis _not_ your inheritance, or glad to see you in it. You, ye diaboliccanaille, what has a Governor much to do with you? You, I think, hewill rather swiftly dismiss from his thoughts, --which have the wholecelestial and terrestrial for their scope, and not the subterranean ofscoundreldom alone. You, I consider, he will sweep pretty rapidly intosome Norfolk Island, into some special Convict Colony or remotedomestic Moorland, into some stone-walled Silent-System, under harddrill-sergeants, just as Rhadamanthus, and inflexible as he, and thereleave you to reap what you have sown; he meanwhile turning his endeavorsto the thousand-fold immeasurable interests of men and gods, --dismissingthe one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels; sweeping thatinto the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very briefmanner, if needful! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should forever be pestered with you? Have we no work to do butdrilling Devil's regiments of the line?

If I had schoolmasters, my benevolent friend, do you imagine I would setthem on teaching a set of unteachables, who as you perceive have alreadymade up their mind that black is white, --that the Devil namely is theadvantageous Master to serve in this world? My esteemed Benefactorof Humanity, it shall be far from me. Minds open to that particularconviction are not the material I like to work upon. When once myschoolmasters have gone over all the other classes of society fromtop to bottom; and have no other soul to try with teaching, allbeing thoroughly taught, --I will then send them to operate on _these_regiments of the line: then, and, assure yourself, never till then. Thetruth is, I am sick of scoundreldom, my esteemed Benefactor; it alwayswas detestable to me; and here where I find it lodged in palaces andwaited on by the benevolent of the world, it is more detestable, not tosay insufferable to me than ever. 

Of Beneficence, Benevolence, and the people that come together to talkon platforms and subscribe five pounds, I will say nothing here; indeedthere is not room here for the twentieth part of what were to be said ofthem. The beneficence, benevolence, and sublime virtue which issues ineloquent talk reported in the Newspapers, with the subscription offive pounds, and the feeling that one is a good citizen and ornament tosociety, --concerning this, there were a great many unexpected remarks tobe made; but let this one, for the present occasion, suffice:--

My sublime benevolent friends, don't you perceive, for one thing, that here is a shockingly unfruitful investment for your capital ofBenevolence; precisely the worst, indeed, which human ingenuity couldselect for you? "Laws are unjust, temptations great, " &c. &c. : alas, Iknow it, and mourn for it, and passionately call on all men to help inaltering it. But according to every hypothesis as to the law, and thetemptations and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, ofall the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of theworst substance for enduring pressure! The others yet stand andmake resistance to temptation, to the law's injustice; under all theperversities and strangling impediments there are, the rest of thesociety still keep their feet, and struggle forward, marching underthe banner of Cosmos, of God and Human Virtue; these select Few, as Iexplain to you, are they who have fallen to Chaos, and are sworninto certain regiments of the line. A superior proclivity to Chaos isdeclared in these, by the very fact of their being here! Of all thegeneration we live in, these are the worst stuff. These, I say, are theElixir of the Infatuated among living mortals: if you want the worstinvestment for your Benevolence, here you accurately have it. O mysurprising friends! Nowhere so as here can you be certain that a givenquantity of wise teaching bestowed, of benevolent trouble taken, willyield zero, or the net _Minimum_ of return. It is sowing of your wheatupon Irish quagmires; laboriously harrowing it in upon the sand of theseashore. O my astonishing benevolent friends!

Yonder, in those dingy habitations, and shops of red herring andtobacco-pipes, where men have not yet quite declared for the Devil;there, I say, is land: here is mere sea-beach. Thither go with yourbenevolence, thither to those dingy caverns of the poor; and thereinstruct and drill and manage, there where some fruit may come from it. And, above all and inclusive of all, cannot you go to those Solemn humanShams, Phantasm Captains, and Supreme Quacks that ride prosperously inevery thoroughfare; and with severe benevolence, ask them, What theyare doing here? They are the men whom it would behoove you to drill alittle, and tie to the halberts in a benevolent manner, if you could!"We cannot, " say you? Yes, my friends, to a certain extent you can. Bymany well-known active methods, and by all manner of passive methods, you can. Strive thitherward, I advise you; thither, with whateversocial effort there may lie in you! The well-head and "consecrated"thrice-accursed chief fountain of all those waters of bitterness, --it isthey, those Solemn Shams and Supreme Quacks of yours, little as they oryou imagine it! Them, with severe benevolence, put a stop to; them sendto their Father, far from the sight of the true and just, --if you wouldever see a just world here!

What sort of reformers and workers are you, that work only on therotten material? That never think of meddling with the material whileit continues sound; that stress it and strain it with new rates andassessments, till once it has given way and declared itself rotten;whereupon you snatch greedily at it, and say, Now let us try to do somegood upon it! You mistake in every way, my friends: the fact is, youfancy yourselves men of virtue, benevolence, what not; and you are noteven men of sincerity and honest sense. I grieve to say it; but it istrue. Good from you, and your operations, is not to be expected. You maygo down!

Howard is a beautiful Philanthropist, eulogized by Burke, and inmost men's minds a sort of beatified individual. How glorious, havingfinished off one's affairs in Bedfordshire, or in fact finding them verydull, inane, and worthy of being quitted and got away from, to set outon a cruise, over the Jails first of Britain; then, finding thatanswer, over the Jails of the habitable Globe! "A voyage of discovery, a circum-navigation of charity; to collate distresses, to gaugewretchedness, to take the dimensions of human misery:" really it is veryfine. Captain Cook's voyage for the Terra Australis, Ross's, Franklin'sfor the ditto Borealis: men make various cruises and voyages inthis world, --for want of money, want of work, and one or the otherwant, --which are attended with their difficulties too, and do not makethe cruiser a demigod. On the whole, I have myself nothing butrespect, comparatively speaking, for the dull solid Howard, and his"benevolence, " and other impulses that set him cruising; Heavenhad grown weary of Jail-fevers, and other the like unjust penaltiesinflicted upon scoundrels, --for scoundrels too, and even the very Devil, should not have _more_ than their due;--and Heaven, in its opulence, created a man to make an end of that. Created him; disgusted him withthe grocer business; tried him with Calvinism, rural ennui, and sorebereavement in his Bedfordshire retreat;--and, in short, at last gothim set to his work, and in a condition to achieve it. For which I amthankful to Heaven; and do also, --with doffed hat, humbly salute JohnHoward. A practical solid man, if a dull and even dreary; "carrieshis weighing-scales in his pocket:" when your jailer answers, "Theprisoner's allowance of food is so and so; and we observe it sacredly;here, for example, is a ration. "--"Hey! A ration this?" and solid Johnsuddenly produces his weighing-scales; weighs it, marks down in histablets what the actual quantity of it is. That is the art and manner ofthe man. A man full of English accuracy; English veracity, solidity, simplicity; by whom this universal Jail-commission, not to be paid forin money but far otherwise, is set about, with all the slow energy, thepatience, practicality, sedulity and sagacity common to the best Englishcommissioners paid in money and not expressly otherwise. 

For it is the glory of England that she has a turn for fidelity inpractical work; that sham-workers, though very numerous, are rarer thanelsewhere; that a man who undertakes work for you will still, in variousprovinces of our affairs, do it, instead of merely seeming to do it. John Howard, without pay in money, _did_ this of the Jail-fever, asother Englishmen do work, in a truly workmanlike manner: his distinctionwas that he did it without money. He had not 500 pounds or 5, 000 poundsa year of salary for it; but lived merely on his Bedfordshire estates, and as Snigsby irreverently expresses it, "by chewing his own cud. " And, sure enough, if any man might chew the cud of placid reflections, solidHoward, a mournful man otherwise, might at intervals indulge a littlein that luxury. --No money-salary had he for his work; he had merely theincome of his properties, and what he could derive from within. Is thissuch a sublime distinction, then? Well, let it pass at its value. Therehave been benefactors of mankind who had more need of money than he, andgot none too. Milton, it is known, did his _Paradise Lost_ at theeasy rate of five pounds. Kepler worked out the secret of the HeavenlyMotions in a dreadfully painful manner; "going over the calculationssixty times;" and having not only no public money, but no privateeither; and, in fact, writing almanacs for his bread-and-water, whilehe did this of the Heavenly Motions; having no Bedfordshire estates;nothing but a pension of 18 pounds (which they would not pay him), thevaluable faculty of writing almanacs, and at length the invaluableone of dying, when the Heavenly bodies were vanquished, and battle'sconflagration had collapsed into cold dark ashes, and the starvationreached too high a pitch for the poor man. 

Howard is not the only benefactor that has worked without money for us;there have been some more, --and will be, I hope! For the Destinies areopulent; and send here and there a man into the world to do work, for which they do not mean to pay him in money. And they smite himbeneficently with sore afflictions, and blight his world all into grimfrozen ruins round him, --and can make a wandering Exile of their Dante, and not a soft-bedded Podesta of Florence, if they wish to get a _DivineComedy_ out of him. Nay that rather is their way, when they have worthywork for such a man; they scourge him manifoldly to the due pitch, sometimes nearly of despair, that he may search desperately for hiswork, and find it; they urge him on still with beneficent stripes whenneedful, as is constantly the case between whiles; and, in fact, haveprivately decided to reward him with beneficent death by and by, and notwith money at all. O my benevolent friend, I honor Howard very much;but it is on this side idolatry a long way, not to an infinite, but toa decidedly finite extent! And you, --put not the modest noble Howard, atruly modest man, to the blush, by forcing these reflections on us!

Cholera Doctors, hired to dive into black dens of infection and despair, they, rushing about all day from lane to lane, with their life in theirhand, are found to do their function; which is a much more rugged onethan Howard's. Or what say we, Cholera Doctors? Ragged losels gatheredby beat of drum from the overcrowded streets of cities, and drilled alittle and dressed in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurablemanner; and handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of ashilling per day? Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, isnot so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundantas the light of the sun: raw materials, --O woe, and loss, and scandalthrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built intoa result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls ofwide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last asenergetic vice instead of strong practical virtue! A Mrs. Manning "dyinggame, "--alas, is not that the foiled potentiality of a kind of heroinetoo? Not a heroic Judith, not a mother of the Gracchi now, but ahideous murderess, fit to be the mother of hyenas! To such extent canpotentialities be foiled. Education, kingship, command, --where is it, whither has it fled? Woe a thousand times, that this, which is thetask of all kings, captains, priests, public speakers, land-owners, book-writers, mill-owners, and persons possessing or pretending topossess authority among mankind, --is left neglected among them all;and instead of it so little done but protocolling, black-or-whitesurplicing, partridge-shooting, parliamentary eloquence and populartwaddle-literature; with such results as we see!--

Howard abated the Jail-fever; but it seems to me he has been theinnocent cause of a far more distressing fever which rages high justnow; what we may call the Benevolent-Platform Fever. Howard is to beregarded as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous frothy ocean-tideof benevolent sentimentality, "abolition of punishment, " all-absorbing"prison-discipline, " and general morbid sympathy, instead of heartyhatred, for scoundrels; which is threatening to drown human society asin deluges, and leave, instead of an "edifice of society" fit forthe habitation of men, a continent of fetid ooze inhabitable only bymud-gods and creatures that walk upon their belly. Few things moredistress a thinking soul at this time. 

Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon ofphilanthropy, the reign of love, new era of universal brotherhood, andnot Paradise to the Well-deserving but Paradise to All-and-sundry, whichpossesses the benighted minds of men and women in our day. My friends, Ithink you are much mistaken about Paradise! "No Paradise for anybody:he that cannot do without Paradise, go his ways:" suppose you tried thatfor a while! I reckon that the safer version. Unhappy sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other; contrary to the fact; not a tatter of itwill hang together in the wind and weather of fact. In brotherhood withthe base and foolish I, for one, do not mean to live. Not in brotherhoodwith them was life hitherto worth much to me; in pity, in hope not yetquite swallowed of disgust, --otherwise in enmity that must last througheternity, in unappeasable aversion shall I have to live withthese! Brotherhood? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam'schildren, --alas yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget it;hence this rage and sorrow. But they have gone over to the dragons; theyhave quitted the Father's house, and set up with the Old Serpent: tillthey return, how can they be brothers? They are enemies, deadly tothemselves and to me and to you, till then; till then, while hope yetlasts, I will treat them as brothers fallen insane;--when hope hasended, with tears grown sacred and wrath grown sacred, I will cut themoff in the name of God! It is at my peril if I do not. With the servantof Satan I dare not continue in partnership. Him I must put away, resolutely and forever; "lest, " as it is written, "I become partaker ofhis plagues. "

Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle and have got the Devilat your elbow; interesting White Felonry, who are not idle, buthave enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the line, --know that mybenevolence for you is comparatively trifling! What I have ofthat divine feeling is due to others, not to you. A "universalSluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society" is not the one I mean toinstitute in these times, where so much wants protection, and is sinkingto sad issues for want of it! The scoundrel needs no protection. Thescoundrel that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear theway for him! Better he reach _his_ goal and outgate by the naturalproclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoningeverything as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last ahundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! Benevolent menshould reflect on this. --And you Quashee, my pumpkin, --(not a bad felloweither, this poor Quashee, when tolerably guided!)--idle Quashee, I sayyou must get the Devil _sent away_ from your elbow, my poor dark friend!In this world there will be no existence for you otherwise. No, not asthe brother of your folly will I live beside you. Please to withdraw outof my way, if I am not to contradict your folly, and amend it, and putit in the stocks if it will not amend. By the Eternal Maker, it is onthat footing alone that you and I can live together! And if you hadrespectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from beyondthe Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins that would thatchthe face of the world, --behold I, for one individual, do not believesaid respectable traditions, nor regard said written sheepskins exceptas things which _you_, till you grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee; I will wish you better guidance than you have had of late. 

On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot bestow on anunworthy man any particle of our benevolence, our patronage, or whateverresource is ours, --without withdrawing it, it and all that will growof it, from one worthy, to whom it of right belongs! We cannot, Isay; impossible; it is the eternal law of things. Incompetent DuncanM'Pastehorn, the hapless incompetent mortal to whom I give the cobblingof my boots, --and cannot find in my heart to refuse it, the poor drunkenwretch having a wife and ten children; he _withdraws_ the job fromsober, plainly competent, and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generallyshort of work too; discourages Sparrowbill; teaches him that he too mayas well drink and loiter and bungle; that this is not a scene formerit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, andincompetent cobbling of every description;--clearly tending to the ruinof poor Sparrowbill! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I shouldso help to ruin him? And I couldn't save the insalvable M'Pastehorn;I merely yielded him, for insufficient work, here and there ahalf-crown, --which he oftenest drank. And now Sparrowbill also isdrinking!

Justice, Justice: woe betides us everywhere when, for this reason orfor that, we fail to do justice! No beneficence, benevolence, or othervirtuous contribution will make good the want. And in what a rate ofterrible geometrical progression, far beyond our poor computation, any act of Injustice once done by us grows; rooting itself ever anew, spreading ever anew, like a banyan-tree, --blasting all life under it, for it is a poison-tree! There is but one thing needed for the world;but that one is indispensable. Justice, Justice, in the name of Heaven;give us Justice, and we live; give us only counterfeits of it, orsuccedanea for it, and we die!

Oh, this universal syllabub of philanthropic twaddle! My friend, it isvery sad, now when Christianity is as good as extinct in all hearts, tomeet this ghastly-Phantasm of Christianity parading through almost all. "I will clean your foul thoroughfares, and make your Devil's-cloaca ofa world into a garden of Heaven, " jabbers this Phantasm, itself aphosphorescence and unclean! The worst, it is written, comes fromcorruption of the best:--Semitic forms now lying putrescent, dead andstill unburied, this phosphorescence rises. I say sometimes, such ablockhead Idol, and miserable _White_ Mumbo-jumbo, fashioned out ofdeciduous sticks and cast clothes, out of extinct cants and modernsentimentalisms, as that which they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall andextensively elsewhere, was perhaps never set up by human folly before. Unhappy creatures, that is not the Maker of the Universe, not that, look one moment at the Universe, and see! That is a paltry Phantasm, engendered in your own sick brain; whoever follows that as a Realitywill fall into the ditch. 

Reform, reform, all men see and feel, is imperatively needed. Reformmust either be got, and speedily, or else we die: and nearly all the menthat speak, instruct us, saying, "Have you quite done your interestingNegroes in the Sugar Islands? Rush to the Jails, then, O ye reformers;snatch up the interesting scoundrel-population there, to them benursing-fathers and nursing-mothers. And oh, wash, and dress, and teach, and recover to the service of Heaven these poor lost souls: so, weassure you, will society attain the needful reform, and life be stillpossible in this world. " Thus sing the oracles everywhere; nearly allthe men that speak, though we doubt not, there are, as usual, immensemajorities consciously or unconsciously wiser who hold their tongue. Butexcept this of whitewashing the scoundrel-population, one sees little"reform" going on. There is perhaps some endeavor to do a littlescavengering; and, as the all-including point, to cheapen the terriblecost of Government: but neither of these enterprises makes progress, owing to impediments. 

"Whitewash your scoundrel-population; sweep out your abominable gutters(if not in the name of God, ye brutish slatterns, then in the name ofCholera and the Royal College of Surgeons): do these two things;--andobserve, much cheaper if you please!"--Well, here surely is an Evangelof Freedom, and real Program of a new Era. What surliest misanthropewould not find this world lovely, were these things done: scoundrelswhitewashed; some degree of scavengering upon the gutters; and at acheap rate, thirdly? That surely is an occasion on which, if everon any, the Genius of Reform may pipe all hands!--Poor old Genius ofReform; bedrid this good while; with little but broken ballot-boxes, andtattered stripes of Benthamee Constitutions lying round him; and on thewalls mere shadows of clothing-colonels, rates-in-aid, poor-law unions, defunct potato and the Irish difficulty, --he does not seem long for thisworld, piping to that effect?

Not the least disgusting feature of this Gospel according to thePlatform is its reference to religion, and even to the ChristianReligion, as an authority and mandate for what it does. ChristianReligion? Does the Christian or any religion prescribe loveof scoundrels, then? I hope it prescribes a healthy hatred ofscoundrels;--otherwise what am I, in Heaven's name, to make of it? Me, for one, it will not serve as a religion on those strange terms. Justhatred of scoundrels, I say; fixed, irreconcilable, inexorable enmityto the enemies of God: this, and not love for them, and incessantwhitewashing, and dressing and cockering of them, must, if you lookinto it, be the backbone of any human religion whatsoever. ChristianReligion! In what words can I address you, ye unfortunates, sunk in theslushy ooze till the worship of mud-serpents, and unutterable Pythonsand poisonous slimy monstrosities, seems to you the worship of God? Thisis the rotten carcass of Christianity; this mal-odorous phosphorescenceof post-mortem sentimentalism. O Heavens, from the Christianity ofOliver Cromwell, wrestling in grim fight with Satan and his incarnateBlackguardisms, Hypocrisies, Injustices, and legion of human andinfernal angels, to that of eloquent Mr. Hesperus Fiddlestringdenouncing capital punishments, and inculcating the benevolence onplatforms, what a road have we travelled!

A foolish stump-orator, perorating on his platform mere benevolences, seems a pleasant object to many persons; a harmless or insignificantone to almost all. Look at him, however; scan him till you discern thenature of him, he is not pleasant, but ugly and perilous. Thatbeautiful speech of his takes captive every long ear, and kindles intoquasi-sacred enthusiasm the minds of not a few; but it is quite in theteeth of the everlasting facts of this Universe, and will come onlyto mischief for every party concerned. Consider that little spoutingwretch. Within the paltry skin of him, it is too probable, he holds fewhuman virtues, beyond those essential for digesting victual: envious, cowardly, vain, splenetic hungry soul; what heroism, in word or thoughtor action, will you ever get from the like of him? He, in his necessity, has taken into the benevolent line; warms the cold vacuity of his innerman to some extent, in a comfortable manner, not by silently doing somevirtue of his own, but by fiercely recommending hearsay pseudo-virtuesand respectable benevolences to other people. Do you call that a goodtrade? Long-eared fellow-creatures, more or less resembling himself, answer, "Hear, hear! Live Fiddlestring forever!" Wherefrom followAbolition Congresses, Odes to the Gallows;--perhaps some dirty littleBill, getting itself debated next Session in Parliament, to wastecertain nights of our legislative Year, and cause skipping in ourMorning Newspaper, till the abortion can be emptied out again and sentfairly floating down the gutters. 

Not with entire approbation do I, for one, look on that eloquentindividual. Wise benevolence, if it had authority, would order thatindividual, I believe, to find some other trade: "Eloquent individual, pleading here against the Laws of Nature, --for many reasons, I bid theeclose that mouth of thine. Enough of balderdash these long-eared havenow drunk. Depart thou; _do_ some benevolent work; at lowest, be silent. Disappear, I say; away, and jargon no more in that manner, lest a worstthing befall thee. " _Exeat_ Fiddlestring!--Beneficent men are not theywho appear on platforms, pleading against the Almighty Maker's Laws;these are the maleficent men, whose lips it is pity that some authoritycannot straightway shut. Pandora's Box is not more baleful than thegifts these eloquent benefactors are pressing on us. Close your pedler'spack, my friend; swift, away with it! Pernicious, fraught with mere woeand sugary poison is that kind of benevolence and beneficence. 

Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is that of poorcreatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situations, making andunmaking "Laws;" in whose soul, full of mere vacant hearsay and windybabble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law; whom it never struck thatHeaven had a Law, or that the Earth--could not have what kind of Law youpleased! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to thinkof. An impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is somade; all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischiefwheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now like anincubus over this Earth, so innumerable are they. How long, O Lord, howlong!--O ye Eternities, Divine Silences, do you dwell no more, then, inthe hearts of the noble and the true; and is there no inspiration ofthe Almighty any more vouchsafed us? The inspiration of the MorningNewspapers--alas, we have had enough of that, and are arrived at thegates of death by means of that!

"Really, one of the most difficult questions this we have in thesetimes, What to do with our criminals?" blandly observed a certainLaw-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar from his mouth, andpensively smiling over a group of us under the summer beech-tree, asFavonius carried off the tobacco-smoke; and the group said nothing, onlysmiled and nodded, answering by new tobacco-clouds. "What to do with ourcriminals?" asked the official Law-dignitary again, as if entirely at aloss. --"I suppose, " said one ancient figure not engaged in smoking, "theplan would be to treat them according to the real law of the case; tomake the Law of England, in respect of them, correspond to the Law ofthe Universe. Criminals, I suppose, would prove manageable in that way:if we could do approximately as God Almighty does towards them; in aword, if we could try to do Justice towards them. "--"I'll thank youfor a definition of Justice?" sneered the official person in a cheerilyscornful and triumphant manner, backed by a slight laugh from thehonorable company; which irritated the other speaker. --"Well, I have nopocket definition of Justice, " said he, "to give your Lordship. It hasnot quite been my trade to look for such a definition; I could ratherfancy it had been your Lordship's trade, sitting on your high place thislong while. But one thing I can tell you: Justice always is, whether wedefine it or not. Everything done, suffered or proposed, in Parliamentor out of it, is either just or else unjust; either is accepted by thegods and eternal facts, or is rejected by them. Your Lordship and I, with or without definition, do a little know Justice, I will hope; ifwe don't both know it and do it, we are hourly travelling downtowards--Heavens, must I name such a place! That is the place we arebound to, with all our trading-pack, and the small or extensive budgetsof human business laid on us; and there, if we _don't know_ Justice, we, and all our budgets and Acts of Parliament, shall find lodging when theday is done!"--The official person, a polite man otherwise, grinned ashe best could some semblance of a laugh, mirthful as that of the asseating thistles, and ended in "Hah, oh, ah!"--

Indeed, it is wonderful to hear what account we at present giveourselves of the punishment of criminals. No "revenge"--O Heavens, no;all preachers on Sunday strictly forbid that; and even (at leaston Sundays) prescribe the contrary of that. It is for the sake of"example, " that you punish; to "protect society" and its purse and skin;to deter the innocent from falling into crime; and especially withal, for the purpose of improving the poor criminal himself, --or at lowest, of hanging and ending him, that he may not grow worse. For the poorcriminal is, to be "improved" if possible: against him no "revenge" evenon week-days; nothing but love for him, and pity and help; poor fellow, is he not miserable enough? Very miserable, --though much less so thanthe Master of him, called Satan, is understood (on Sundays) to have longdeservedly been!

My friends, will you permit me to say that all this, to one poorjudgment among your number, is the mournfulest twaddle that humantongues could shake from them; that it has no solid foundation in thenature of things; and to a healthy human heart no credibility whatever. Permit me to say, only to hearts long drowned in dead Tradition, and forthemselves neither believing nor disbelieving, could this seem credible. Think, and ask yourselves, in spite of all this preaching and peroratingfrom the teeth outward! Hearts that are quite strangers to eternal Fact, and acquainted only at all hours with temporary Semblances paradingabout in a prosperous and persuasive condition; hearts that fromtheir first appearance in this world have breathed since birth, inall spiritual matters, which means in all matters not pecuniary, thepoisonous atmosphere of universal Cant, could believe such a thing. Cantmoral, Cant religious, Cant political; an atmosphere which envelops allthings for us unfortunates, and has long done; which goes beyondthe Zenith and below the Nadir for us, and has as good as choked thespiritual life out of all of us, --God pity such wretches, with littleor nothing _real_ about them but their purse and their abdominaldepartment! Hearts, alas, which everywhere except in the metallurgicand cotton-spinning provinces, have communed with no Reality, or awfulPresence of a Fact, godlike or diabolic, in this Universe or thisunfathomable Life at all. Hunger-stricken asphyxied hearts, which havenourished themselves on what they call religions, Christian religions. Good Heaven, once more fancy the Christian religion of Oliver Cromwell;or of some noble Christian man, whom you yourself may have been blessedenough, once, long since, in your life, to know! These are not _untrue_religions; they are the putrescences and foul residues of religions thatare extinct, that have plainly to every honest nostril been dead sometime, and the remains of which--O ye eternal Heavens, will thenostril never be delivered from them!--Such hearts, when they get uponplatforms, and into questions not involving money, can "believe" manythings!--

I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, andonly one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world; onereason, which ancient piety could well define: That you may do the willand commandment of God with regard to him; that you may do justice tohim. This is your one true aim in respect of him; aim thitherward, withall your heart and all your strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at all! This aim is true, and will carry you toall earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. Allother aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry youbeyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapableof maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law of God is withregard to a man; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill withyou, and not well! If you love your thief or murderer, if Nature andeternal Fact love him, then do as you are now doing. But if Nature andFact do _not_ love him? If they have set inexorable penalties uponhim, and planted natural wrath against him in every god-created humanheart, --then I advise you, cease, and change your hand. 

Reward and punishment? Alas, alas, I must say you reward and punishpretty much alike! Your dignities, peerages, promotions, your kingships, your brazen statues erected in capital and county towns to our selectdemigods of your selecting, testify loudly enough what kind ofheroes and hero-worshippers you are. Woe to the People that no longervenerates, as the emblem of God himself, the aspect of Human Worth; thatno longer knows what human worth and unworth is! Sure as the Decrees ofthe Eternal, that People cannot come to good. By a course too clear, by a necessity too evident, that People will come into the hands of theunworthy; and either turn on its bad career, or stagger downwards toruin and abolition. Does the Hebrew People prophetically sing "Ou'clo'!" in all thoroughfares, these eighteen hundred years in vain?

To reward men according to their worth: alas, the perfection of this, we know, amounts to the millennium! Neither is perfect punishment, according to the like rule, to be attained, --nor even, by a legislatorof these chaotic days, to be too zealously attempted. But when he doesattempt it, --yes, when he summons out the Society to sit deliberative onthis matter, and consult the oracles upon it, and solemnly settle it inthe name of God; then, if never before, he should try to be a littlein the right in settling it!--In regard to reward of merit, I do notbethink me of any attempt whatever, worth calling an attempt, on thepart of modern Governments; which surely is an immense oversight ontheir part, and will one day be seen to have been an altogether fatalone. But as to the punishment of crime, happily this cannot be quiteneglected. When men have a purse and a skin, they seek salvation atleast for these; and the Four Pleas of the Crown are a thing thatmust and will be attended to. By punishment, capital or other, bytreadmilling and blind rigor, or by whitewashing and blind laxity, theextremely disagreeable offences of theft and murder must be kept downwithin limits. 

And so you take criminal caitiffs, murderers, and the like, and hangthem on gibbets "for an example to deter others. " Whereupon arisefriends of humanity, and object. With very great reason, as I consider, if your hypothesis be correct. What right have you to hang any poorcreature "for an example"? He can turn round upon you and say, "Why makean 'example' of me, a merely ill-situated, pitiable man? Have you nomore respect for misfortune? Misfortune, I have been told, is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fallen into your hands; choke the life outof me, for an example! Again I ask, Why make an example of me, for yourown convenience alone?"--All "revenge" being out of the question, itseems to me the caitiff is unanswerable; and he and the philanthropicplatforms have the logic all on their side. 

The one answer to him is: "Caitiff, we hate thee; and discern for somesix thousand years now, that we are called upon by the whole Universeto do it. Not with a diabolic but with a divine hatred. God himself, wehave always understood, 'hates sin, ' with a most authentic, celestial, and eternal hatred. A hatred, a hostility inexorable, unappeasable, which blasts the scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately, into blackannihilation and disappearance from the sum of things. The path of itas the path of a flaming sword: he that has eyes may see it, walkinginexorable, divinely beautiful and divinely terrible, through thechaotic gulf of Human History, and everywhere burning, as withunquenchable fire, the false and death-worthy from the true andlife-worthy; making all Human History, and the Biography of every man, aGod's Cosmos in place of a Devil's Chaos. So is it, in the end; evenso, to every man who is a man, and not a mutinous beast, and has eyes tosee. To thee, caitiff, these things were and are, quite incredible;to us they are too awfully certain, --the Eternal Law of this Universe, whether thou and others will believe it or disbelieve. We, not tobe partakers in thy destructive adventure of defying God and all theUniverse, dare not allow thee to continue longer among us. As a palpabledeserter from the ranks where all men, at their eternal peril, are boundto be: palpable deserter, taken with the red band fighting thus againstthe whole Universe and its Laws, we--send thee back into the wholeUniverse, solemnly expel thee from our community; and will, in the nameof God, not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow stern as thy own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so end. "

Other ground on which to deliberately slay a disarmed fellow-man I cansee none. Example, effects upon the public mind, effects upon this andupon that: all this is mere appendage and accident; of all this I makeno attempt to keep account, --sensible that no arithmetic will or cankeep account of it; that its "effects, " on this hand and on that, transcend all calculation. One thing, if I can calculate it, willinclude all, and produce beneficial effects beyond calculation, andno ill effect at all, anywhere or at any time: What the Law of theUniverse, or Law of God, is with regard to this caitiff? That, by allsacred research and consideration, I will try to find out; to that Iwill come as near as human means admit; that shall be my exemplar and"example;" all men shall through me see that, and be profited _beyond_calculation by seeing it. 

What this Law of the Universe, or Law made by God, is? Men at one timeread it in their Bible. In many Bibles, Books, and authentic symbolsand monitions of Nature and the World (of Fact, that is, and ofHuman Speech, or Wise Interpretation of Fact), there are still clearindications towards it. Most important it is, for this and for someother reasons, that men do, in some way, get to see it a little! And ifno man could now see it by any Bible, there is written in the heart ofevery man an authentic copy of it direct from Heaven itself: there, ifhe have learnt to decipher Heaven's writing, and can read the sacredoracles (a sad case for him if he altogether cannot), every born man maystill find some copy of it. 

"Revenge, " my friends! revenge, and the natural hatred of scoundrels, and the ineradicable tendency to _revancher_ oneself upon them, andpay them what they have merited: this is forevermore intrinsically acorrect, and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man. Onlythe excess of it is diabolic; the essence I say is manlike, and evengodlike, --a monition sent to poor man by the Maker himself. Thou, poorreader, in spite of all this melancholy twaddle, and blotting out ofHeaven's sunlight by mountains of horsehair and officiality, hast stilla human heart. If, in returning to thy poor peaceable dwelling-place, after an honest hard day's work, thou wert to find, for example, abrutal scoundrel who for lucre or other object of his, had slaughteredthe life that was dearest to thee; thy true wife, for example, thy trueold mother, swimming in her blood; the human scoundrel, or two-leggedwolf, standing over such a tragedy: I hope a man would have so muchdivine rage in his heart as to snatch the nearest weapon, and put aconclusion upon said human wolf, for one! A palpable messenger of Satan, that one; accredited by all the Devils, to be put an end to by all thechildren of God. The soul of every god-created man flames wholly intoone divine blaze of sacred wrath at sight of such a Devil's-messenger;authentic firsthand monition from the Eternal Maker himself as to whatis next to be done. Do it, or be thyself an ally of Devil's-messengers;a sheep for two-legged human wolves, well deserving to be eaten, as thousoon wilt be!

My humane friends, I perceive this same sacred glow of divine wrath, orauthentic monition at first hand from God himself, to be the foundationfor all Criminal Law, and Official horsehair-and-bombazine procedureagainst Scoundrels in this world. This first-hand gospel from theEternities, imparted to every mortal, this is still, and will foreverbe, your sanction and commission for the punishment of human scoundrels. See well how you will translate this message from Heaven and theEternities into a form suitable to this World and its Times. Let notviolence, haste, blind impetuous impulse, preside in executing it; theinjured man, invincibly liable to fall into these, shall not himselfexecute it: the whole world, in person of a Minister appointed for thatend, and surrounded with the due solemnities and caveats, with bailiffs, apparitors, advocates, and the hushed expectation of all men, shall doit, as under the eye of God who made all men. How it shall be done? thisis ever a vast question, involving immense considerations. Thus EdmundBurke saw, in the Two Houses of Parliament, with King, Constitution, andall manner of Civil-Lists, and Chancellors' wigs and Exchequer budgets, only the "method of getting twelve just men put into a jury-box:" that, in Burke's view, was the summary of what they were all meant for. Howthe judge will do it? Yes, indeed:--but let him see well that he doesdo it: for it is a thing that must by no means be left undone! Asacred gospel from the Highest: not to be smothered under horsehairand bombazine, or drowned in platform froth, or in any wise omitted orneglected, without the most alarming penalties to all concerned!

Neglect to treat the hero as hero, the penalties--which are inevitabletoo, and terrible to think of, as your Hebrew friends can tell you--maybe some time in coming; they will only gradually come. Not all at oncewill your thirty thousand Needlewomen, your three million Paupers, yourConnaught fallen into potential Cannibalism, and other fine consequencesof the practice, come to light;--though come to light they will; and"Ou' clo'!" itself may be in store for you, if you persist steadilyenough. But neglect to treat even your declared scoundrel as scoundrel, this is the last consummation of the process, the drop by which the cupruns over; the penalties of this, most alarming, extensive, and such asyou little dream of, will straightway very rapidly come. Dim oblivion ofRight and Wrong, among the masses of your population, will come; doubtsas to Right and Wrong, indistinct notion that Right and Wrong are noteternal, but accidental, and settled by uncertain votings and talkings, will come. Prurient influenza of Platform Benevolence, and "Paradiseto All-and-sundry, " will come. In the general putrescence of your"religions, " as you call them, a strange new religion, named ofUniversal Love, with Sacraments mainly of--_Divorce_, with Balzac, Sueand Company for Evangelists, and Madame Sand for Virgin, will come, --andresults fast following therefrom which will astonish you very much!

"The terrible anarchies of these years, " says Crabbe, in his _Radiator_, "are brought upon us by a necessity too visible. By the crime ofKings, --alas, yes; but by that of Peoples too. Not by the crime of oneclass, but by the fatal obscuration, and all but obliteration of thesense of Right and Wrong in the minds and practices of every class. Whata scene in the drama of Universal History, this of ours! A world-wideloud bellow and bray of universal Misery; _lowing_, with crushedmaddened heart, its inarticulate prayer to Heaven:--very pardonable tome, and in some of its transcendent developments, as in the grand FrenchRevolution, most respectable and ever-memorable. For Injustice reignseverywhere; and this murderous struggle for what they call 'Fraternity, 'and so forth has a spice of eternal sense in it, though so terriblydisfigured! Amalgam of sense and nonsense; eternal sense by the grain, and temporary nonsense by the square mile: as is the habit with poorsons of men. Which pardonable amalgam, however, if it be taken as thepure final sense, I must warn you and all creatures, is unpardonable, criminal, and fatal nonsense;--with which I, for one, will take care notto concern myself!

"_Dogs should not be taught to eat leather_, says the old adage:no;--and where, by general fault and error, and the inevitable nemesisof things, the universal kennel is set to diet upon _leather_; and fromits keepers, its 'Liberal Premiers, ' or whatever their title is, willaccept or expect nothing else, and calls it by the pleasant name ofprogress, reform, emancipation, abolition-principles, and the like, --Iconsider the fate of said kennel and of said keepers to be a thingsettled. Red republic in Phrygian nightcap, organization of labor _a la_Louis Blanc; street-barricades, and then murderous cannon-volleys _a la_Cavaignac and Windischgratz, follow out of one another, as grapes, must, new wine, and sour all-splitting vinegar do: vinegar is but _vin-aigre_, or the self-same 'wine' grown _sharp_! If, moreover, I find the Worshipof Human Nobleness abolished in any country, and a _new_ astonishingPhallus-Worship, with universal Balzac-Sand melodies and litanies intreble and in bass, established in its stead, what can I computebut that Nature, in horrible throes, will repugn against suchsubstitution, --that, in short, the astonishing new Phallus-Worship, withits finer sensibilities of the heart, and 'great satisfying loves, 'with its sacred kiss of peace for scoundrel and hero alike, with itsall-embracing Brotherhood, and universal Sacrament of Divorce, will haveto take itself away again!"

The Ancient Germans, it appears, had no scruple about public executions;on the contrary, they thought the just gods themselves might fitlypreside over these; that these were a solemn and highest act of worship, if justly done. When a German man had done a crime deserving death, they, in solemn general assembly of the tribe, doomed him, andconsidered that Fate and all Nature had from the beginning doomed him, to die with ignominy. Certain crimes there were of a supreme nature;him that had perpetrated one of these, they believed to have declaredhimself a prince of scoundrels. Him once convicted they laid hold of, nothing doubting; bore him, after judgment, to the deepest convenientPeat-bog; plunged him in there, drove an oaken frame down over him, solemnly in the name of gods and men: "There, prince of scoundrels, thatis what we have had to think of thee, on clear acquaintance; our grimgood-night to thee is that! In the name of all the gods lie there, andbe our partnership with thee dissolved henceforth. It will be better forus, we imagine!"

My friends, after all this beautiful whitewash and humanity andprison-discipline; and such blubbering and whimpering, and soft Litanyto divine and also to quite other sorts of Pity, as we have had for acentury now, --give me leave to admonish you that that of the AncientGermans too was a thing inexpressibly necessary to keep in mind. If thatis not kept in mind, the universal Litany to Pity is a mere universalnuisance, and torpid blasphemy against the gods. I do not much respectit, that purblind blubbering and litanying, as it is seen at present;and the litanying over scoundrels I go the length of disrespecting, and in some cases even of detesting. Yes, my friends, scoundrel isscoundrel: that remains forever a fact; and there exists not in theearth whitewash that can make the scoundrel a friend of this Universe;he remains an enemy if you spent your life in whitewashing him. He won'twhitewash; this one won't. The one method clearly is, That, after fairtrial, you dissolve partnership with him; send him, in the name ofHeaven, whither _he_ is striving all this while and have done with him. And, in a time like this, I would advise you, see likewise that you bespeedy about it! For there is immense work, and of a far hopefuler sort, to be done _elsewhere_. 

Alas, alas, to see once the "prince of scoundrels, " the SupremeScoundrel, him whom of all men the gods liked worst, solemnly laid holdof, and hung upon the gallows in sight of the people; what a lesson toall the people! Sermons might be preached; the Son of Thunder and theMouth of Gold might turn their periods now with some hope; for here, inthe most impressive way, is a divine sermon acted. Didactic as nospoken sermon could be. Didactic, devotional too;--in awed solemnity, a recognition that Eternal Justice rules the world; that at the call ofthis, human pity shall fall silent, and man be stern as his Master andMandatory is!--Understand too that except upon a basis of even suchrigor, sorrowful, silent, inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, thereis no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and plentifulwithout that basis, is mere _ignavia_ and cowardly effeminacy; maudlinlaxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of head--contemptible as adrunkard's tears. 

To see our Supreme Scoundrel hung upon the gallows, alas, that is farfrom us just now! There is a worst man in England, too, --curious tothink of, --whom it would be inexpressibly advantageous to lay holdof, and hang, the first of all. But we do not know him with the leastcertainty, the least approach even to a guess, --such buzzards anddullards and poor children of the Dusk are we, in spite of ourStatistics, Unshackled Presses, and Torches of Knowledge;--not eaglessoaring sunward, not brothers of the lightnings and the radiances we;a dim horn-eyed, owl-population, intent mainly on the catching of mice!Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike with the supreme hero, is very farfrom being known. Nor have we the smallest apparatus for dealingwith either of them, if he were known. Our supreme scoundrel sits, Iconjecture, well-cushioned, in high places, at this time; rolls softlythrough the world, and lives a prosperous gentleman; instead of sinkinghim in peat-bogs, we mount the brazen image of him on high columns: suchis the world's temporary judgment about its supreme scoundrels; a madworld, my masters. To get the supreme scoundrel always accurately thefirst hanged, this, which presupposes that the supreme hero were alwaysthe first promoted, this were precisely the millennium itself, clearevidence that the millennium had come: alas, we must forbear hope ofthis. Much water will run by before we see this. 

And yet to quit all aim towards it; to go blindly floundering along, wrapt up in clouds of horsehair, bombazine, and sheepskin officiality, oblivious that there exists such an aim; this is indeed fatal. In everyhuman law there must either exist such an aim, or else the law is not ahuman but a diabolic one. Diabolic, I say: no quantity of bombazine, orlawyers' wigs, three-readings, and solemn trumpeting and bow-wowingin high places or in low, can hide from me its frightful infernaltendency;--bound, and sinking at all moments gradually to Gehenna, this "law;" and dragging down much with it! "To decree _injustice_ bya _law_:" inspired Prophets have long since seen, what every clear soulmay still see, that of all Anarchies and Devil-worships there is nonelike this; that this is the "Throne of Iniquity" set up in the name ofthe Highest, the human Apotheosis of Anarchy itself. "_Quiet_ Anarchy, "you exultingly say? Yes; quiet Anarchy, which the longer it sits "quiet"will have the frightfuler account to settle at last. For every doit ofthe account, as I often say, will have to be settled one day, as sure asGod lives. Principal, and compound interest rigorously computed; and theinterest is at a terrible rate per cent in these cases! Alas, the aspectof certain beatified Anarchies, sitting "quiet;" and of others in astate of infernal explosion for sixty years back: this, the one view ourEurope offers at present, makes these days very sad. --

My unfortunate philanthropic friends, it is this long-continued oblivionof the soul of law that has reduced the Criminal Question to such a passamong us. Many other things have come, and are coming, for the same sadreason, to a pass! Not the supreme scoundrel have our laws aimed at;but, in an uncertain fitful manner, at the inferior or lowest scoundrel, who robs shop-tills and puts the skin of mankind in danger. How canParliament get through the Criminal Question? Parliament, oblivious ofHeavenly Law, will find itself in hopeless _reductio ad absurdum_ inregard to innumerable other questions, --in regard to all questionswhatsoever by and by. There will be no existence possible for Parliamenton these current terms. Parliament, in its law-makings, must really tryto attain some vision again of what Heaven's Laws are. A thing noteasy to do; a thing requiring sad sincerity of heart, reverence, piousearnestness, valiant manful wisdom;--qualities not overabundant inParliament just now, nor out of it, I fear. 

Adieu, my friends. My anger against you is gone; my sad reflectionson you, and on the depths to which you and I and all of us are sunk inthese strange times, are not to be uttered at present. You would havesaved the Sarawak Pirates, then? The Almighty Maker is wroth that theSarawak cut-throats, with their poisoned spears, are away? What must hiswrath be that the thirty thousand Needlewomen are still here, and thequestion of "prevenient grace" not yet settled! O my friends, in sadearnest, sad and deadly earnest, there much needs that God would mendall this, and that we should help him to mend it!--And don't you think, for one thing, "Farmer Hodge's horses" in the Sugar Islands are prettywell "emancipated" now? My clear opinion farther is, we had better quitthe Scoundrel-province of Reform; better close that under hatches, insome rapid summary manner, and go elsewhither with our Reform efforts. Awhole world, for want of Reform, is drowning and sinking; threatening toswamp itself into a Stygian quagmire, uninhabitable by any noble-mindedman. Let us to the well-heads, I say; to the chief fountains of thesewaters of bitterness; and there strike home and dig! To puddle in theembouchures and drowned outskirts, and ulterior and ultimate issues andcloacas of the affair: what profit can there be in that? Nothing to besaved there; nothing to be fished up there, except, with endless periland spread of pestilence, a miscellany of broken waifs and dead dogs! Inthe name of Heaven, quit that!

No. III. DOWNING STREET. [April 1, 1850. ]

From all corners of the wide British Dominion there rises one complaintagainst the ineffectuality of what are nicknamed our "red-tape"establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial Office, ForeignOffice and the others, in Downing Street and the neighborhood. To meindividually these branches of human business are little known; butevery British citizen and reflective passer-by has occasion to wondermuch, and inquire earnestly, concerning them. To all men it is evidentthat the social interests of one hundred and fifty Millions of us dependon the mysterious industry there carried on; and likewise that thedissatisfaction with it is great, universal, and continually increasingin intensity, --in fact, mounting, we might say, to the pitch of settleddespair. 

Every colony, every agent for a matter colonial, has his tragic taleto tell you of his sad experiences in the Colonial Office; what blindobstructions, fatal indolences, pedantries, stupidities, on the rightand on the left, he had to do battle with; what a world-wide jungle ofred-tape, inhabited by doleful creatures, deaf or nearly so to humanreason or entreaty, he had entered on; and how he paused in amazement, almost in despair; passionately appealed now to this doleful creature, now to that, and to the dead red-tape jungle, and to the living Universeitself, and to the Voices and to the Silences;--and, on the whole, foundthat it was an adventure, in sorrowful fact, equal to the fabulousones by old knights-errant against dragons and wizards in enchantedwildernesses and waste howling solitudes; not achievable except bynearly superhuman exercise of all the four cardinal virtues, andunexpected favor of the special blessing of Heaven. His adventureachieved or found unachievable, he has returned with experiences newto him in the affairs of men. What this Colonial Office, inhabitingthe head of Downing Street, really was, and had to do, or try doing, inGod's practical Earth, he could not by any means precisely get to know;believes that it does not itself in the least precisely know. Believesthat nobody knows;--that it is a mystery, a kind of Heathen myth;and stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon; for itpractically presides over the destinies of many millions of living men. 

Such is his report of the Colonial Office: and if we oftener hear sucha report of that than we do of the Home Office, Foreign Office or therest, --the reason probably is, that Colonies excite more attention atpresent than any of our other interests. The Forty Colonies, it appears, are all pretty like rebelling just now; and are to be pacified withconstitutions; luckier Constitutions, let us hope, than some late oneshave been. Loyal Canada, for instance, had to quench a rebellion theother year; and this year, in virtue of its constitution, it iscalled upon to pay the rebels their damages; which surely is a rathersurprising result, however constitutional!--Men have rents and moneysdependent in the Colonies; Emigration schemes, Black Emancipations, New-Zealand and other schemes; and feel and publish more emphaticallywhat their Downing-Street woes in these respects have been. 

Were the state of poor sallow English ploughers and weavers, what we maycall the Sallow or Yellow Emancipation interest, as much in object withExeter-Hall Philanthropists as that of the Black blockheads now allemancipated, and going at large without work, or need of working, inWest-India clover (and fattening very much in it, one delights to hear), then perhaps the Home Office, its huge virtual task better understood, and its small actual performance better seen into, might be found stillmore deficient, and behind the wants of the age, than the Colonialitself is. 

How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in thecharacter of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her hugesword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles(horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror fromsaid huge sword), to see how they will like it, --do from time to timeastonish the world, in a not pleasant manner. Hercules-Harlequin, theAttorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody: none of these are parts thisNation has a turn for; she, if you consulted her, would rather not playthese parts, but another! Seizures of Sapienza, correspondences withSotomayor, remonstrances to Otho King of Athens, fleets hanging by theiranchor in behalf of the Majesty of Portugal; and in short the whole, or at present very nearly the whole, of that industry of protocolling, diplomatizing, remonstrating, admonishing, and "having the honor tobe, "--has sunk justly in public estimation to a very low figure. 

For in fact, it is reasonably asked, What vital interest has Englandin any cause now deciding itself in foreign parts? Once there was aPapistry and Protestantism, important as life eternal and death eternal;more lately there was an interest of Civil Order and Horrors of theFrench Revolution, important at least as rent-roll and preservation ofthe game; but now what is there? No cause in which any god or man ofthis British Nation can be thought to be concerned. Sham-kingship, nowrecognized and even self-recognized everywhere to be sham, wrestlesand struggles with mere ballot-box Anarchy: not a pleasant spectacle toBritish minds. Both parties in the wrestle professing earnest wishes ofpeace to us, what have we to do with it except answer earnestly, "Peace, yes certainly, " and mind our affairs elsewhere. The British Nation hasno concern with that indispensable sorrowful and shameful wrestle nowgoing on everywhere in foreign parts. The British Nation already, byself-experience centuries old, understands all that; was lucky enoughto transact the greater part of that, in noble ancient ages, while thewrestle had not yet become a shameful one, but on both sides of it therewas wisdom, virtue, heroic nobleness fruitful to all time, --thrice-luckyBritish Nation! The British Nation, I say, has nothing to learn there;has now quite another set of lessons to learn, far ahead of whatis going on there. Sad example there, of what the issue is, and howinevitable and how imminent, might admonish the British Nation tobe speedy with its new lessons; to bestir itself, as men in peril ofconflagration do, with the neighboring houses all on fire! To obtain, for its own very pressing behoof, if by possibility it could, some realCaptaincy instead of an imaginary one: to remove resolutely, and replaceby a better sort, its own peculiar species of teaching and guidinghistrios of various name, who here too are numerous exceedingly, andmuch in need of gentle removal, while the play is still good, and thecomedy has not yet become _tragic_; and to be a little swift about itwithal; and so to escape the otherwise inevitable evil day! This Britainmight learn: but she does not need a protocolling establishment, withmuch "having the honor to be, " to teach it her. 

No:--she has in fact certain cottons, hardwares and such like to sell inforeign parts, and certain wines, Portugal oranges, Baltic tar andother products to buy; and does need, I suppose, some kind of Consul, oraccredited agent, accessible to British voyagers, here and there, in thechief cities of the Continent: through which functionary, or through thepenny-post, if she had any specific message to foreign courts, it wouldbe easy and proper to transmit the same. Special message-carriers, to bestill called Ambassadors, if the name gratified them, could be sent whenoccasion great enough demanded; not sent when it did not. But for allpurposes of a resident ambassador, I hear persons extensively and wellacquainted among our foreign embassies at this date declare, That awell-selected _Times_ reporter or "own correspondent" ordered to residein foreign capitals, and keep his eyes open, and (though sparingly) hispen going, would in reality be much more effective;--and surely we seewell, he would come a good deal cheaper! Considerably cheaper in expenseof money; and in expense of falsity and grimacing hypocrisy (of which nohuman arithmetic can count the ultimate cost) incalculably cheaper!If this is the fact, why not treat it as such? If this is so in anymeasure, we had better in that measure admit it to be so! The time, Ibelieve, has come for asking with considerable severity, How far is itso? Nay there are men now current in political society, men of weightthough also of wit, who have been heard to say, "That there was but onereform for the Foreign Office, --to set a live coal under it, " and with, of course, a fire-brigade which could prevent the undue spread of thedevouring element into neighboring houses, let that reform it! Insuch odor is the Foreign Office too, if it were not that the Public, oppressed and nearly stifled with a mere infinitude of bad odors, neglects this one, --in fact, being able nearly always to avoid thestreet where it is, _escapes_ this one, and (except a passing curse, once in the quarter or so) as good as forgets the existence of it. 

Such, from sad personal experience and credited prevailing rumor, is theexoteric public conviction about these sublime establishments in DowningStreet and the neighborhood, the esoteric mysteries of which are indeedstill held sacred by the initiated, but believed by the world to be mereDalai-Lama pills, manufactured let not refined lips hint how, and quite_un_salvatory to mankind. Every one may remark what a hope animates theeyes of any circle, when it is reported or even confidently asserted, that Sir Robert Peel has in his mind privately resolved to go, one day, into that stable of King Augeas, which appalls human hearts, so richis it, high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years; andHercules-like to load a thousand night-wagons from it, and turn runningwater into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till theantique pavement, and real basis of the matter, show itself clean again!In any intelligent circle such a rumor, like the first break of dayto men in darkness, enlightens all eyes; and each says devoutly, "_Faxitis_, O ye righteous Powers that have pity on us! All Englandgrateful, with kindling looks, will rise in the rear of him, and fromits deepest heart bid him good speed!"

For it is universally felt that some _esoteric_ man, well acquaintedwith the mysteries and properties good and evil of the administrativestable, is the fittest to reform it, nay can alone reform it otherwisethan by sheer violence and destruction, which is a way we would avoid;that in fact Sir Robert Peel is, at present, the one likely or possibleman to reform it. And secondly it is felt that "reform" in thatDowning-Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which wereworth all others; that those administrative establishments in DowningStreet are really the Government of this huge ungoverned Empire; thatto clean out the dead pedantries, unveracities, indolent somnolentimpotences, and accumulated dung-mountains there, is the beginning ofall practical good whatsoever. Yes, get down once again to the actual_pavement_ of that; ascertain what the thing is, and was before dungaccumulated in it; and what it should and may, and must, for the life'ssake of this Empire, henceforth become: here clearly lies the heart ofthe whole matter. Political reform, if this be not reformed, is naughtand a mere mockery. 

What England wants, and will require to have, or sink in namelessanarchies, is not a Reformed Parliament, meaning thereby a Parliamentelected according to the six or the four or any other number of "points"and cunningly devised improvements in hustings mechanism, but a ReformedExecutive or Sovereign Body of Rulers and Administrators, --some improvedmethod, innumerable improvements in our poor blind methods, of gettinghold of these. Not a better Talking-Apparatus, the best conceivableTalking-Apparatus would do very little for us at present;--but aninfinitely better Acting-Apparatus, the benefits of which would beinvaluable now and henceforth. The practical question puts itself withever-increasing stringency to all English minds: Can we, by no industry, energy, utmost expenditure of human ingenuity, and passionate invocationof the Heavens and Earth, get to attain some twelve or ten or six men tomanage the affairs of this nation in Downing Street and the chief postselsewhere, who are abler for the work than those we have been used to, this long while? For it is really a heroic work, and cannot be done byhistrios, and dexterous talkers having the honor to be: it is a heavyand appalling work; and, at the starting of it especially, willrequire Herculean men; such mountains of pedant exuviae and obsceneowl-droppings have accumulated in those regions, long the habitationof doleful creatures; the old _pavements_, the natural facts and realessential functions of those establishments, have not been seen by eyesfor these two hundred years last past! Herculean men acquainted with thevirtues of running water, and with the divine necessity of getting downto the clear pavements and old veracities; who tremble before no amountof pedant exuviae, no loudest shrieking of doleful creatures; whotremble only to live, themselves, like inane phantasms, and to leavetheir life as a paltry _contribution_ to the guano mountains, and not asa divine eternal protest against them!

These are the kind of men we want; these, the nearest possibleapproximation to these, are the men we must find and have, or gobankrupt altogether; for the concern as it is will evidently not holdlong together. How true is this of Crabbe: "Men sit in Parliamenteighty-three hours per week, debating about many things. Men sit inDowning Street, doing protocols, Syrian treaties, Greek questions, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Egyptian and AEthiopian questions;dexterously writing despatches, and having the honor to be. Not aquestion of them is at all pressing in comparison with the Englishquestion. Pacifico the miraculous Gibraltar Jew has been hustled by somepopulace in Greece:--upon him let the British Lion drop, very rapidlyindeed, a constitutional tear. Radetzky is said to be advancing uponMilan;--I am sorry to hear it, and perhaps it does deserve a despatch, or friendly letter, once and away: but the Irish Giant, named ofDespair, is advancing upon London itself, laying waste all Englishcities, towns and villages; that is the interesting Government despatchof the day! I notice him in Piccadilly, blue-visaged, thatched in rags, a blue child on each arm; hunger-driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom hemay devour: he, missioned by the just Heavens, too truly and too sadlytheir 'divine missionary' come at last in this authoritative manner, will throw us all into Doubting Castle, I perceive! That is thephenomenon worth protocolling about, and writing despatches upon, andthinking of with all one's faculty day and night, if one wishes to havethe honor to be--anything but a Phantasm Governor of England just now!I entreat your Lordship's all but undivided attention to that DomesticIrish Giant, named of Despair, for a great many years to come. Prophecyof him there has long been; but now by the rot of the potato (blessed bethe just gods, who send us either swift death or some beginning ofcure at last!), he is here in person, and there is no denying him, ordisregarding him any more; and woe to the public watchman that ignoreshim, and sees Pacifico the Gibraltar Jew instead!"

What these strange Entities in Downing Street intrinsically are; whomade them, why they were made; how they do their function; and whattheir function, so huge in appearance, may in net-result amount to, --isprobably known to no mortal. The unofficial mind passes by in darkwonder; not pretending to know. The official mind must not blab;--theofficial mind, restricted to its own square foot of territory in thevast labyrinth, is probably itself dark, and unable to blab. We see theoutcome; the mechanism we do not see. How the tailors clip and sew, inthat sublime sweating establishment of theirs, we know not: that thecoat they bring us out is the sorrowfulest fantastic mockery of a coat, a mere intricate artistic network of traditions and formalities, anembroiled reticulation made of web-listings and superannuated thrums andtatters, endurable to no grown Nation as a coat, is mournfully clear!--

Two kinds of fundamental error are supposable in such a set of Offices;these two, acting and reacting, are the vice of all inefficient Officeswhatever. --_First_, that the work, such as it may be, is ill done inthese establishments. That it is delayed, neglected, slurred over, committed to hands that cannot do it well; that, in a word, thequestions sent thither are not wisely handled, but unwisely; not decidedtruly and rapidly, but with delays and wrong at last: which is theprincipal character, and the infallible result, of an insufficientIntellect being set to decide them. Or _second_, what is still fataler, the work done there may itself be quite the wrong kind of work. Notthe kind of supervision and direction which Colonies, and other suchinterests, Home or Foreign, do by the nature of them require from theCentral Government; not that, but a quite other kind! The Sotomayorcorrespondence, for example, is considered by many persons not tobe mismanaged merely, but to be a thing which should never have beenmanaged at all; a quite superfluous concern, which and the like of whichthe British Government has almost no call to get into, at this new epochof time. And not Sotomayor only, nor Sapienza only, in regard to thatForeign Office, but innumerable other things, if our witty friend of the"live coal" have reason in him! Of the Colonial Office, too, it is urgedthat the questions they decide and operate upon are, in very great part, questions which they never should have meddled with, but almost allof which should have been decided in the Colonies themselves, --MotherCountry or Colonial Office reserving its energy for a quite other classof objects, which are terribly neglected just now. 

These are the two vices that beset Government Offices; both of themoriginating in insufficient Intellect, --that sad insufficiency fromwhich, directly or indirectly, all evil whatsoever springs! And thesetwo vices act and react, so that where the one is, the other is sure tobe; and each encouraging the growth of the other, both (if some cleaningof the Augeas stable have not intervened for a long while) will be foundin frightful development. You cannot have your work well done, if thework be not of a right kind, if it be not work prescribed by the law ofNature as well as by the rules of the office. Laziness, which lies inwait round all human labor-offices, will in that case infallibly leakin, and vitiate the doing of the work. The work is but idle; if thedoing of it will but pass, what need of more? The essential problem, as the rules of office prescribe it for you, if Nature and Fact saynothing, is that your work be got to pass; if the work itself is worthnothing, or little or an uncertain quantity, what more can gods or menrequire of it, or, above all, can I who am the doer of it require, butthat it be got to pass?

And now enters another fatal effect, the mother of ever-new mischiefs, which renders well-doing or improvement impossible, and drives badeverywhere continually into worse. The work being what we see, a stupidsubaltern will do as well as a gifted one; the essential point is, thathe be a quiet one, and do not bother me who have the driving of him. Nay, for this latter object, is not a certain height of intelligenceeven dangerous? I want no mettled Arab horse, with his flashing glances, arched, neck and elastic step, to draw my wretched sand-cart through thestreets; a broken, grass-fed galloway, Irish garron, or painful ass withnothing in the belly of him but patience and furze, will do it safelierfor me, if more slowly. Nay I myself, am I the worse for being of afeeble order of intelligence; what the irreverent speculative, worldcalls barren, red-tapish, limited, and even intrinsically dark andsmall, and if it must be said, stupid?--To such a climax does it comein all Government and other Offices, where Human Stupidity has onceintroduced itself (as it will everywhere do), and no Scavenger Godintervenes. The work, at first of some worth, is ill done, and becomesof less worth and of ever less, and finally of none: the worthlesswork can now _afford_ to be ill done; and Human Stupidity, at adouble geometrical ratio, with frightful expansion grows andaccumulates, --towards the unendurable. 

The reforming Hercules, Sir Robert Peel or whoever he is to be, thatenters Downing Street, will ask himself this question first of all, Whatwork is now necessary, not in form and by traditionary use and wont, butin very fact, for the vital interests of the British Nation, to be donehere? The second question, How to get it well done, and to keep thebest hands doing it well, will be greatly simplified by a good answer tothat. Oh for an eye that could see in those hideous mazes, and a heartthat could dare and do! Strenuous faithful scrutiny, not of what is_thought_ to be what in the red-tape regions, but of what really iswhat in the realms of Fact and Nature herself; deep-seeing, wise andcourageous eyes, that could look through innumerable cobweb veils, and detect what fact or no-fact lies at heart of them, --how invaluablethese! For, alas, it is long since such eyes were much in the habitof looking steadfastly at any department of our affairs; and poorcommonplace creatures, helping themselves along, in the way ofmakeshift, from year to year, in such an element, do wonderful worksindeed. Such creatures, like moles, are safe only underground, and theirengineerings there become very daedalean. In fact, such unfortunatepersons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconcethemselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicabletraditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight ofcommon-sense, as very extraneous to them and their procedure; by longpersistence in which course they become Completed Pedants, hidebound, impenetrable, able to _defy_ the hostile extraneous element; an alarmingkind of men, Such men, left to themselves for a century or two, in anyColonial, Foreign, or other Office, will make a terrible affair of it!

For the one enemy we have in this Universe is Stupidity, Darkness ofMind; of which darkness, again, there are many sources, every _sin_ asource, and probably self-conceit the chief source. Darkness of mind, in every kind and variety, does to a really tragic extent abound: but ofall the kinds of darkness, surely the Pedant darkness, which assertsand believes itself to be light, is the most formidable to mankind! Forempires or for individuals there is but one class of men to be trembledat; and that is the Stupid Class, the class that cannot see, who alasare they mainly that will not see. A class of mortals under which asadministrators, kings, priests, diplomatists, &c. , the interestsof mankind in every European country have sunk overloaded, as underuniversal nightmare, near to extinction; and indeed are at this momentconvulsively writhing, decided either to throw off the unblessedsuperincumbent nightmare, or roll themselves and it to the Abyss. Vainto reform Parliament, to invent ballot-boxes, to reform this or that;the real Administration, practical Management of the Commonwealth, goes all awry; choked up with long-accumulated pedantries, so that yourappointed workers have been reduced to work as moles; and it is one vastboring and counter-boring, on the part of eyeless persons irreverentlycalled stupid; and a daedalean bewilderment, writing "impossible" on allefforts or proposals, supervenes. 

The State itself, not in Downing Street alone but in every department ofit, has altered much from what it was in past times; and it will againhave to alter very much, to alter I think from top to bottom, if itmeans to continue existing in the times that are now coming and come!

The State, left to shape itself by dim pedantries and traditions, without distinctness of conviction, or purpose beyond that of helpingitself over the difficulty of the hour, has become, instead of aluminous vitality permeating with its light all provinces of ouraffairs, a most monstrous agglomerate of inanities, as little adaptedfor the actual wants of a modern community as the worst citizen needwish. The thing it is doing is by no means the thing we want to havedone. What we want! Let the dullest British man endeavor to raise in hismind this question, and ask himself in sincerity what the British Nationwants at this time. Is it to have, with endless jargoning, debating, motioning and counter-motioning, a settlement effected between theHonorable Mr. This and the Honorable Mr. That, as to their respectivepretensions to ride the high horse? Really it is unimportant which ofthem ride it. Going upon past experience long continued now, I shouldsay with brevity, "Either of them--Neither of them. " If our Governmentis to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Flingan orange-skin into St. James's Street; let the man it hits be your man. He, if you breed him a little to it, and tie the due official bladdersto his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem ofbalancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded-pole in hishands; and will, with straddling painful gestures, float hither andthither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while, as well as his foregoers did, till he also capsize, and be left floatingfeet uppermost; after which you choose another. 

What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all cornersof your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is thefunction, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling outyour orange-skin again; and save an incalculable labor, and an emissionof nonsense and falsity, and electioneering beer and bribery andbalderdash, which is terrible to think of, in deciding. Your NationalParliament, in so far as it has only that question to decide, may beconsidered as an enormous National Palaver existing mainly for imaginarypurposes; and certain, in these days of abbreviated labor, to get itselfsent home again to its partridge-shootings, fox-huntings, and above all, to its rat-catchings, if it could but understand the time of day, andknow (as our indignant Crabbe remarks) that "the real Nimrod of thisera, who alone does any good to the era, is the rat-catcher!"

The notion that any Government is or can be a No-Government, withoutthe deadliest peril to all noble interests of the Commonwealth, andby degrees slower or swifter to all ignoble ones also, and to thevery gully-drains, and thief lodging-houses, and Mosaic sweatingestablishments, and at last without destruction to such No-Governmentitself, --was never my notion; and I hope it will soon cease altogetherto be the world's or to be anybody's. But if it be the correctnotion, as the world seems at present to flatter itself, I point outimprovements and abbreviations. Dismiss your National Palaver; make the_Times_ Newspaper your National Palaver, which needs no beer-barrels orhustings, and is _cheaper_ in expense of money and of falsity a thousandand a million fold; have an economical red-tape drilling establishment(it were easier to devise such a thing than a right _ModernUniversity_);--and fling out your orange-skin among the graduates, whenyou want a new Premier. 

A mighty question indeed! Who shall be Premier, and take in hand the"rudder of government, " otherwise called the "spigot of taxation;" shallit be the Honorable Felix Parvulus, or the Right Honorable FelicissimusZero? By our electioneerings and Hansard Debatings, and ever-enduringtempest of jargon that goes on everywhere, we manage to settle that; tohave it declared, with no bloodshed except insignificant blood fromthe nose in hustings-time, but with immense beershed and inkshedand explosion of nonsense, which darkens all the air, that the RightHonorable Zero is to be the man. That we firmly settle; Zero, allshivering with rapture and with terror, mounts into the high saddle;cramps himself on, with knees, heels, hands and feet; and the horsegallops--whither it lists. That the Right Honorable Zero should attemptcontrolling the horse--Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too happy if the horse will only gallop any-whither, and not throwhim. Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, is notin the head of Felicissimus; except, if he could but devise it, somemeasure that would please his horse for the moment, and encourage himto go with softer paces, godward or devilward as it might be, and saveFelicissimus's leather, which is fast wearing. This is what we call aGovernment in England, for nearly two centuries now. 

I wish Felicissimus were saddle-sick forever and a day! He is a dreadfulobject, however much we are used to him. If the horse had not been bredand broken in, for a thousand years, by real riders and horse-subduers, perhaps the best and bravest the world ever saw, what would have becomeof Felicissimus and him long since? This horse, by second-nature, religiously respects all fences; gallops, if never so madly, on thehighways alone;--seems to me, of late, like a desperate Sleswickthunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the labyrinthic lanesof a woody flat country; passionate to reach his goal; unable to reachit, because in the flat leafy lanes there is no outlook whatever, andin the bridle there is no guidance whatever. So he gallops stormfullyalong, thinking it is forward and forward; and alas, it is only roundand round, out of one old lane into the other;--nay (according tosome) "he mistakes _his own footprints_, which of course grow ever morenumerous, for the sign of a more and more frequented road;" and hisdespair is hourly increasing. My impression is, he is certain soon, suchis the growth of his necessity and his despair, to--plunge _across_ thefence, into an opener survey of the country; and to sweep Felicissimusoff his back, and comb him away very tragically in the process! PoorSleswicker, I wish you were better ridden. I perceive it lies in theFates you must now either be better ridden, or else not long at all. This plunging in the heavy labyrinth of over-shaded lanes, with one'sstomach getting empty, one's Ireland falling into cannibalism, and novestige of a goal either visible or possible, cannot last. 

Colonial Offices, Foreign, Home and other Offices, got together underthese strange circumstances, cannot well be expected to be the best thathuman ingenuity could devise; the wonder rather is to see them so goodas they are. Who made them, ask me not. Made they clearly were; for wesee them here in a concrete condition, writing despatches, and drawingsalary with a view to buy pudding. But how those Offices in DowningStreet were made; who made them, or for what kind of objects they weremade, would be hard to say at present. Dim visions and phantasmagoriesgathered from the Books of Horace Walpole, Memoirs of Bubb Doddington, Memoirs of my Lady Sundon, Lord Fanny Hervey, and innumerable others, rise on us, beckoning fantastically towards, not an answer, but someconceivable intimations of an answer, and proclaiming very legibly theold text, "_Quam parva sapientia_, " in respect of this hard-workingmuch-subduing British Nation; giving rise to endless reflections in athinking Englishman of this day. Alas, it is ever so: each generationhas its task, and does it better or worse; greatly neglecting what isnot immediately its task. Our poor grandfathers, so busy conqueringIndias, founding Colonies, inventing spinning-jennies, kindlingLancashires and Bromwichams, took no thought about the government ofall that; left it all to be governed by Lord Fanny and the HanoverSuccession, or how the gods pleased. And now we the poor grandchildrenfind that it will not stick together on these terms any longer; that oursad, dangerous and sore task is to discover some government for thisbig world which has been conquered to us; that the red-tape Officesin Downing Street are near the end of their rope; that if we can getnothing better, in the way of government, it is all over with our worldand us. How the Downing-Street Offices originated, and what the meaningof them was or is, let Dryasdust, when in some lucid moment the whimtakes him, instruct us. Enough for us to know and see clearly, withurgent practical inference derived from such insight, That they were notmade for us or for our objects at all; that the devouring Irish Giantis here, and that he cannot be fed with red-tape, and will eat us if wecannot feed him. 

On the whole, let us say Felicissimus made them;--or rather it wasthe predecessors of Felicissimus, who were not so dreadfully hunted, sticking to the wild and ever more desperate Sleswicker in the leafylabyrinth of lanes, as he now is. He, I think, will never make anything;but be combed off by the elm-boughs, and left sprawling in the ditch. But in past time, this and the other heavy-laden red-tape soul hadwithal a glow of patriotism in him; now and then, in his whirlingelement, a gleam of human ingenuity, some eye towards business that mustbe done. At all events, for him and every one, Parliament needed tobe persuaded that business was done. By the contributions of many suchheavy-laden souls, driven on by necessity outward and inward, thesesingular Establishments are here. Contributions--who knows how far backthey go, far beyond the reign of George the Second, or perhaps the reignof William Conqueror. Noble and genuine some of them were, many of themwere, I need not doubt: for there is no human edifice that stands longbut has got itself planted, here and there, upon the basis of fact;and being built, in many respects, according to the laws of statics: nostanding edifice, especially no edifice of State, but has had thewise and brave at work in it, contributing their lives to it; and is"cemented, " whether it know the fact or not, "by the blood of heroes!"None; not even the Foreign Office, Home Office, still less the NationalPalaver itself. William Conqueror, I find, must have had a first-rateHome Office, for his share. The _Domesday Book_, done in four years, and done as it is, with such an admirable brevity, explicitness andcompleteness, testifies emphatically what kind of under-secretaries andofficials William had. Silent officials and secretaries, I suppose;not wasting themselves in parliamentary talk; reserving all theirintelligence for silent survey of the huge dumb fact, silentconsideration how they might compass the mastery of that. Happysecretaries, happy William!

But indeed nobody knows what inarticulate traditions, remnants of oldwisdom, priceless though quite anonymous, survive in many modern thingsthat still have life in them. Ben Brace, with his taciturnities, andrugged stoical ways, with his tarry breeches, stiff as plank-breeches, I perceive is still a kind of _Lod-brog_ (Loaded-breeks) in more sensesthan one; and derives, little conscious of it, many of his excellencesfrom the old Sea-kings and Saxon Pirates themselves; and how many Blakesand Nelsons since have contributed to Ben! "Things are not so falsealways as they seem, " said a certain Professor to me once: "of thisyou will find instances in every country, and in your England more thanany--and I hope will draw lessons from them. An English Seventy-four, ifyou look merely at the articulate law and methods of it, is one of theimpossiblest entities. The captain is appointed not by preeminent meritin sailorship, but by parliamentary connection; the men [this was spokensome years ago] are got by impressment; a press-gang goes out, knocksmen down on the streets of sea-towns, and drags them on board, --if theship were to be stranded, I have heard they would nearly all run ashoreand desert. Can anything be more unreasonable than a Seventy-four?Articulately almost nothing. But it has inarticulate traditions, ancientmethods and habitudes in it, stoicisms, noblenesses, _true_ rulesboth of sailing and of conduct; enough to keep it afloat on Nature'sveridical bosom, after all. See; if you bid it sail to the end of theworld, it will lift anchor, go, and arrive. The raging oceans do notbeat it back; it too, as well as the raging oceans, has a relationshipto Nature, and it does not sink, but under the due conditions is bornealong. If it meet with hurricanes, it rides them out; if it meet anEnemy's ship, it shivers it to powder; and in short, it holds on itsway, and to a wonderful extent _does_ what it means and pretends to do. Assure yourself, my friend, there is an immense fund of truth somewhereor other stowed in that Seventy-four. "

More important than the past history of these Offices in Downing Street, is the question of their future history; the question, How they areto be got mended! Truly an immense problem, inclusive of all otherswhatsoever; which demands to be attacked, and incessantly persisted in, by all good citizens, as the grand problem of Society, and the one thingneedful for the Commonwealth! A problem in which all men, with all theirwisdoms and all their virtues, faithfully and continually co-operatingat it, will never have done _enough_, and will still only be struggling_towards_ perfection in it. In which some men can do much;--in whichevery man can do something. Every man, and thou my present Reader canstdo this: _Be_ thyself a man abler to be governed; more reverencing thedivine faculty of governing, more sacredly detesting the diabolicalsemblance of said faculty in self and others; so shalt thou, if notgovern, yet actually according to thy strength assist in real governing. And know always, and even lay to heart with a quite unusual solemnity, with a seriousness altogether of a religious nature, that as "HumanStupidity" is verily the accursed parent of all this mischief, soHuman Intelligence alone, to which and to which only is victory andblessedness appointed here below, will or can cure it. If we knewthis as devoutly as we ought to do, the evil, and all other evils werecurable;--alas, if we had from of old known this, as all men made inGod's image ought to do, the evil never would have been! Perhaps fewNations have ever known it less than we, for a good while back, havedone. Hence these sorrows. 

What a People are the poor Thibet idolaters, compared with us andour "religions, " which issue in the worship of King Hudson as ourDalai-Lama! They, across such hulls of abject ignorance, have seen intothe heart of the matter; we, with our torches of knowledge everywherebrandishing themselves, and such a human enlightenment as never wasbefore, have quite missed it. Reverence for Human Worth, earnest devoutsearch for it and encouragement of it, loyal furtherance and obedienceto it: this, I say, is the outcome and essence of all true "religions, "and was and ever will be. We have not known this. No; loud as ourtongues sometimes go in that direction, we have no true reverencefor Human Intelligence, for Human Worth and Wisdom: none, or toolittle, --and I pray for a restoration of such reverence, as for thechange from Stygian darkness to Heavenly light, as for the returnof life to poor sick moribund Society and all its interests. HumanIntelligence means little for most of us but Beaver Contrivance, whichproduces spinning-mules, cheap cotton, and large fortunes. Wisdom, unless it give us railway scrip, is not wise. 

True nevertheless it forever remains that Intellect is the real objectof reverence, and of devout prayer, and zealous wish and pursuit, amongthe sons of men; and even, well understood, the one object. It is theInspiration of the Almighty that giveth men understanding. For it mustbe repeated, and ever again repeated till poor mortals get to discernit, and awake from their baleful paralysis, and degradation under foulenchantments, That a man of Intellect, of real and not sham Intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of nobleness, a manof courage, rectitude, pious strength; who, even _because_ he is and hasbeen loyal to the Laws of this Universe, is initiated into _discernment_of the same; to this hour a Missioned of Heaven; whom if men follow, itwill be well with them; whom if men do not follow, it will not be well. Human Intellect, if you consider it well, is the exact summary of Human_Worth_; and the essence of all worth-ships and worships is reverencefor that same. This much surprises you, friend Peter; but I assure youit is the fact;--and I would advise you to consider it, and to tryif you too do not gradually find it so. With me it has long been anarticle, not of "faith" only, but of settled insight, of conviction asto what the ordainments of the Maker in this Universe are. Ah, could youand the rest of us but get to know it, and everywhere religiouslyact upon it, --as our _Fortieth_ Article, which includes all the otherThirty-nine, and without which the Thirty-nine are good for almostnothing, --there might then be some hope for us! In this world thereis but one appalling creature: the Stupid man _considered_ to be theMissioned of Heaven, and followed by men. He is our King, men say, he;--and they follow him, through straight or winding courses, I for oneknow well whitherward. 

Abler men in Downing Street, abler men to govern us: yes, that, sureenough, would gradually remove the dung-mountains, however high theyare; that would be the way, nor is there any other way, to remedywhatsoever has gone wrong in Downing Street and in the wide regions, spiritual and temporal, which Downing Street presides over! For the AbleMan, meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of Falsityand Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order: into whatabsurdest element soever you put him, he is there to make it a littleless absurd, to fight continually with it till it become a little saneand human again. Peace on other terms he, for his part, cannot make withit; not he, while he continues _able_, or possessed of real intellectand not imaginary. There is but one man fraught with blessings for thisworld, fated to diminish and successively abolish the curses of theworld; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and follow; knowthat to find him or miss him, means victory or defeat for you, in allDowning Streets, and establishments and enterprises here below. --I leaveyour Lordship to judge whether this has been our practice hitherto;and would humbly inquire what your Lordship thinks is likely to be theconsequence of continuing to neglect this. It ought to have been ourpractice; ought, in all places and all times, to be the practice in thisworld; so says the fixed law of things forevermore:--and it must ceaseto be _not_ the practice, your Lordship; and cannot too speedily do so Ithink!--

Much has been done in the way of reforming Parliament in late years; butthat of itself seems to avail nothing, or almost less. The men that sitin Downing Street, governing us, are not abler men since the ReformBill than were those before it. Precisely the same kind of men; obedientformerly to Tory traditions, obedient now to Whig ditto and popularclamors. Respectable men of office: respectably commonplace infacility, --while the situation is becoming terribly original! Renderingtheir outlooks, and ours, more ominous every day. 

Indisputably enough the meaning of all reform-movement, electing andelectioneering, of popular agitation, parliamentary eloquence, and allpolitical effort whatsoever, is that you may get the ten Ablest Men inEngland put to preside over your ten principal departments of affairs. To sift and riddle the Nation, so that you might extricate and siftout the true ten gold grains, or ablest men, and of these make yourGovernors or Public Officers; leaving the dross and common sandy orsilty material safely aside, as the thing to be governed, not to govern;certainly all ballot-boxes, caucuses, Kennington-Common meetings, Parliamentary debatings, Red Republics, Russian Despotisms, andconstitutional or unconstitutional methods of society among mankind, areintended to achieve this one end; and some of them, it will be owned, achieve it very ill!--If you have got your gold grains, if the menyou have got are actually the ablest, then rejoice; with whateverastonishment, accept your Ten, and thank the gods; under this Ten yourdestruction will at least be milder than under another. But if you have_not_ got them, if you are very far from having got them, then do notrejoice at all, then _lament_ very much; then admit that your sublimepolitical constitutions and contrivances do not prove themselvessublime, but ridiculous and contemptible; that your world's wonder of apolitical mill, the envy of surrounding nations, does not yield you realmeal; yields you only powder of millstones (called Hansard Debatings), and a detestable brown substance not unlike the grindings of driedhorse-dung or prepared street-mud, which though sold under royalpatent, and much recommended by the trade, is quite unfit for culinarypurposes!--

But the disease at least is not mysterious, whatever the remedy be. Ourdisease, --alas, is it not clear as the sun, that we suffer under what isthe disease of all the miserable in this world, _want of wisdom_; thatin the Head there is no vision, and that thereby all the members aredark and in bonds? No vision in the head; heroism, faith, devout insightto discern what is needful, noble courage to do it, greatly defectivethere: not seeing eyes there, but spectacles constitutionally ground, which, to the unwary, _seem_ to see. A quite fatal circumstance, hadyou never so many Parliaments! How is your ship to be steered by a Pilotwith no _eyes_ but a pair of glass ones got from the constitutionaloptician? He must steer by the _ear_, I think, rather than by the eye;by the shoutings he catches from the shore, or from the Parliamentarybenches nearer hand:--one of the frightfulest objects to see steeringin a difficult sea! Reformed Parliaments in that case, reform-leagues, outer agitations and excitements in never such abundance, cannot profit:all this is but the writhing, and painful blind convulsion of thelimbs that are in bonds, that are all in dark misery till the head bedelivered, till the pressure on the brain be removed. 

Or perhaps there is now no heroic wisdom left in England; England, oncethe land of heroes, is itself sunk now to a dim owlery, and habitationof doleful creatures, intent only on money-making and other forms ofcatching mice, for whom the proper gospel is the gospel of M'Croudy, andall nobler impulses and insights are forbidden henceforth? Perhaps thesepresent agreeable Occupants of Downing Street, such as the parliamentarymill has yielded them, are the _best_ the miserable soil had grown?The most Herculean Ten Men that could be found among the EnglishTwenty-seven Millions, are these? There _are_ not, in any place, underany figure, ten diviner men among us? Well; in that case, the riddlingand searching of the twenty-seven millions has been _successful_. Hereare our ten divinest men; with these, unhappily not divine enough, wemust even content ourselves and die in peace; what help is there? Nohelp, no hope, in that case. 

But, again, if these are _not_ our divinest men, then evidently therealways is hope, there always is possibility of help; and ruin never isquite inevitable, till we _have_ sifted out our actually divinestten, and set these to try their band at governing!--That this has beenachieved; that these ten men are the most Herculean souls the Englishpopulation held within it, is a proposition credible to no mortal. No, thank God; low as we are sunk in many ways, this is not yet credible!Evidently the reverse of this proposition is the fact. Ten much divinermen do certainly exist. By some conceivable, not forever impossible, method and methods, ten very much diviner men could be siftedout!--Courage; let us fix our eyes on that important fact, and striveall thitherward as towards a door of hope!

Parliaments, I think, have proved too well, in late years, that they arenot the remedy. It is not Parliaments, reformed or other, that will eversend Herculean men to Downing Street, to reform Downing Street for us;to diffuse therefrom a light of Heavenly Order, instead of the murk ofStygian Anarchy, over this sad world of ours. That function does not liein the capacities of Parliment. That is the function of a _King_, --ifwe could get such a priceless entity, which we cannot just now! Failingwhich, Statesmen, or Temporary Kings, and at the very lowest one realStatesman, to shape the dim tendencies of Parliament, and guide themwisely to the goal: he, I perceive, will be a primary condition, indispensable for any progress whatsoever. 

One such, perhaps, might be attained; one such might prove discoverableamong our Parliamentary populations? That one, in such an enterprise asthis of Downing Street, might be invaluable! One noble man, at onceof natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still reallyhuman, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there inthat dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like thedivine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, andsay as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, and real work, and talentto do it henceforth; I will seek for able men to work here, as for theelixir of life to this poor place and me:"--what might not one such maneffect there!

Nay one such is not to be dispensed with anywhere in the affairs ofmen. In every ship, I say, there must be a _seeing_ pilot, not a merehearing one! It is evident you can never get your ship steered throughthe difficult straits by persons standing ashore, on this bank and that, and shouting _their_ confused directions to you: "'Ware that ColonialSandbank!--Starboard now, the Nigger Question!--Larboard, _larboard_, the Suffrage Movement! Financial Reform, your Clothing-Colonelsoverboard! The Qualification Movement, 'Ware-re-re!--Helm-a-lee! Bear ahand there, will you! Hr-r-r, lubbers, imbeciles, fitter for a tailor'sshopboard than a helm of Government, Hr-r-r!"--And so the ship wrigglesand tumbles, and, on the whole, goes as wind and current drive. No shipwas ever steered except to destruction in that manner. I deliberatelysay so: no ship of a State either. If you cannot get a real pilot onboard, and put the helm into his hands, your ship is as good as a wreck. One real pilot on board may save you; all the bellowing from the banksthat ever was, will not, and by the nature of things cannot. Nay yourpilot will have to succeed, if he do succeed, very much in spite of saidbellowing; he will hear all that, and regard very little of it, --in apatient mild-spoken wise manner, will regard all of it as what it is. And I never doubt but there is in Parliament itself, in spite of itsvague palaverings which fill us with despair in these times, a dumbinstinct of inarticulate sense and stubborn practical English insightand veracity, that would manfully support a Statesman who could takecommand with really manful notions of Reform, and as one deserving tobe obeyed. Oh for one such; even one! More precious to us than all thebullion in the Bank, or perhaps that ever was in it, just now!

For it is Wisdom alone that can recognize wisdom: Folly or Imbecilitynever can; and that is the fatalest ban it labors under, dooming it toperpetual failure in all things. Failure which, in Downing Street andplaces of _command_ is especially accursed; cursing not one but hundredsof millions! Who is there that can recognize real intellect, and doreverence to it; and discriminate it well from sham intellect, which isso much more abundant, and deserves the reverse of reverence? He thathimself has it!--One really human Intellect, invested with command, andcharged to reform Downing Street for us, would continually attract realintellect to those regions, and with a divine magnetism search it outfrom the modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession ofintellect to Downing Street would bring to it benefit only, and wouldincrease such divine attraction in it, the parent of all benefit thereand elsewhere!

"What method, then; by what method?" ask many. Method, alas! To securean increased supply of Human Intellect to Downing Street, there willevidently be no quite effectual "method" but that of increasing thesupply of Human Intellect, otherwise definable as Human Worth, inSociety generally; increasing the supply of sacred reverence for it, ofloyalty to it, and of life-and-death desire and pursuit of it, amongall classes, --if we but knew such a "method"! Alas, that were simply themethod of making all classes Servants of Heaven; and except it be devoutprayer to Heaven, I have never heard of any method! To increase thereverence for Human Intellect or God's Light, and the detestationof Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness, what method is there? Nomethod, --except even this, that we should each of us "pray" for it, instead of praying for mere scrip and the like; that Heaven would pleaseto vouchsafe us each a little of it, one by one! As perhaps Heaven, inits infinite bounty, by stern methods, gradually will? Perhaps Heavenhas mercy too in these sore plagues that are oppressing us; and meansto teach us reverence for Heroism and Human Intellect, by such balefulexperience of what issue Imbecility and Parliamentary Eloquence lead to?Such reverence, I do hope, and even discover and observe, is silentlyyet extensively going on among us even in these sad years. In whichsmall salutary fact there burns for us, in this black coil of universalbaseness fast becoming universal wretchedness, an inextinguishablehope; far-off but sure, a divine "pillar of fire by night. " Courage, courage!--

Meanwhile, that our one reforming Statesman may have free commandof what Intellect there is among us, and room to try all means forawakening and inviting ever more of it, there has one small Projectof Improvement been suggested; which finds a certain degree of favorwherever I hear it talked of, and which seems to merit much moreconsideration than it has yet received. Practical men themselves approveof it hitherto, so far as it goes; the one objection being that theworld is not yet prepared to insist on it, --which of course the worldcan never be, till once the world consider it, and in the first placehear tell of it! I have, for my own part, a good opinion of thisproject. The old unreformed Parliament of rotten boroughs _had_ oneadvantage; but that is hereby, in a far more fruitful and effectualmanner, secured to the new. 

The Proposal is, That Secretaries under and upper, that all manner ofchangeable or permanent servants in the Government Offices shallbe selected without reference to their power of getting intoParliament;--that, in short, the Queen shall have power of nominatingthe half-dozen or half-score Officers of the Administration, whosepresence is thought necessary in Parliament, to official seats there, without reference to any constituency but her own only, which of coursewill mean her Prime Minister's. A very small encroachment on the presentconstitution of Parliament; offering the minimum of change in presentmethods, and I almost think a maximum in results to be derivedtherefrom. --The Queen nominates John Thomas (the fittest man she, muchinquiring, can hear tell of in her three kingdoms) President of thePoor-Law Board, Under Secretary of the Colonies, Under, or perhapseven Upper Secretary of what she and her Premier find suitablest for aworking head so eminent, a talent so precious; and grants him, by herdirect authority, seat and vote in Parliament so long as he holds thatoffice. Upper Secretaries, having more to do in Parliament, and beingso bound to be in favor there, would, I suppose, at least till new timesand habits come, be expected to be chosen from among the _People's_Members as at present. But whether the Prime Minister himself is, in alltimes, bound to be first a People's Member; and which, or how many, of his Secretaries and subordinates he might be allowed to take as_Queen's_ Members, my authority does not say, --perhaps has not himselfsettled; the project being yet in mere outline or foreshadow, thepractical embodiment in all details to be fixed by authorities much morecompetent than he. The soul of his project is, That the Crown also havepower to elect a few members to Parliament. 

From which project, however wisely it were embodied, there couldprobably, at first or all at once, no great "accession of intellect" tothe Government Offices ensue; though a little might, even at first, anda little is always precious: but in its ulterior operation, were thatfaithfully developed, and wisely presided over, I fancy an immenseaccession of intellect might ensue;--nay a natural ingress might therebybe opened to all manner of accessions, and the actual flower of whateverintellect the British Nation had might be attracted towards DowningStreet, and continue flowing steadily thither! For, let us see a littlewhat effects this simple change carries in it the possibilities of. Hereare beneficent germs, which the presence of one truly wise man as ChiefMinister, steadily fostering them for even a few years, with the sacredfidelity and vigilance that would beseem him, might ripen into livingpractices and habitual facts, invaluable to us all. 

What it is that Secretaries of State, Managers of ColonialEstablishments, of Home and Foreign Government interests, have reallyand truly to do in Parliament, might admit of various estimate in thesetimes. An apt debater in Parliament is by no means certain to be an ableadministrator of Colonies, of Home or Foreign Affairs; nay, ratherquite the contrary is to be presumed of him; for in order to become a"brilliant speaker, " if that is his character, considerable portions ofhis natural internal endowment must have gone to the surface, in orderto make a shining figure there, and precisely so much the less (few menin these days know how much less!) must remain available in the internalsilent state, or as faculty for thinking, for devising and acting, which latter and which alone is the function essential for him in hisSecretaryship. Not to tell a good story for himself "in Parliament andto the twenty-seven millions, many of them fools;" not that, but to dogood administration, to know with sure eye, and decide with just andresolute heart, what is what in the _things_ committed to his charge:this and not that is the service which poor England, whatever it maythink and maunder, does require and want of the Official Man in DowningStreet. Given a good Official Man or Secretary, he really ought, as faras it is possible, to be left working in the silent state. No mortal canboth work, and do good talking in Parliament, or out of it: the feat isimpossible as that of serving two hostile masters. 

Nor would I, if it could be helped, much trouble my good Secretary withaddressing Parliament: needful explanations; yes, in a free country, surely;--but not to every frivolous and vexatious person, in or out ofParliament, who chooses to apply for them. There should be demandsfor explanation too which were reckoned frivolous and vexatious, andcensured as such. These, I should say, are the not needful explanations:and if my poor Secretary is to be called out from his workshop to answerevery one of these, --his workshop will become (what we at present seeit, deservedly or not) little other than a pillory; the poor Secretarya kind of talking-machine, exposed to dead cats and rotten eggs; andthe "work" got out of him or of it will, as heretofore, be veryinconsiderable indeed!--Alas, on this side also, important improvementsare conceivable; and will even, I imagine, get them whence we may, befound indispensable one day. The honorable gentleman whom you interrupthere, he, in his official capacity, is not an individual now, but theembodiment of a Nation; he is the "People of England" engaged in thework of Secretaryship, this one; and cannot forever afford to let thethree Tailors of Tooley Street break in upon him at all hours!--

But leaving this, let us remark one thing which is very plain: Thatwhatever be the uses and duties, real or supposed, of a Secretaryin Parliament, his faculty to accomplish these is a point entirelyunconnected with his ability to get elected into Parliament, and hasno relation or proportion to it, and no concern with it whatever. Lord Tommy and the Honorable John are not a whit better qualified forParliamentary duties, to say nothing of Secretary duties, than plainTom and Jack; they are merely better qualified, as matters stand, for getting admitted to try them. Which state of matters a reformingPremier, much in want of abler men to help him, now proposes altering. Tom and Jack, once admitted by the Queen's writ, there is every reasonto suppose will do quite as well there as Lord Tommy and the HonorableJohn. In Parliament quite as well: and elsewhere, in the otherinfinitely more important duties of a Government Office, which indeedare and remain the essential, vital and intrinsic duties of such apersonage, is there the faintest reason to surmise that Tom and Jack, if well chosen, will fall short of Lord Tommy and the Honorable John? Noshadow of a reason. Were the intrinsic genius of the men exactly equal, there is no shadow of a reason: but rather there is quite the reverse;for Tom and Jack have been at least workers all their days, not idlers, game-preservers and mere human clothes-horses, at any period of theirlives; and have gained a schooling _thereby_, of which Lord Tommy andthe Honorable John, unhappily strangers to it for most part, can form noconception! Tom and Jack have already, on this most narrow hypothesis, a decided _superiority_ of likelihood over Lord Tommy and the HonorableJohn. 

But the hypothesis is very narrow, and the fact is very wide; thehypothesis counts by units, the fact by millions. Consider how many Tomsand Jacks there are to choose from, well or ill! The aristocratic classfrom whom Members of Parliament can be elected extends only to certainthousands; from these you are to choose your Secretary, if a seat inParliament is the primary condition. But the general population is ofTwenty-seven Millions; from all sections of which you can choose, ifthe seat in Parliament is not to be primary. Make it ultimate instead ofprimary, a last investiture instead of a first indispensable condition, and the whole British Nation, learned, unlearned, professional, practical, speculative and miscellaneous, is at your disposal! In thelowest broad strata of the population, equally as in the highest andnarrowest, are produced men of every kind of genius; man for man, yourchance of genius is as good among the millions as among the units;--andclass for class, what must it be! From all classes, not from certainhundreds now but from several millions, whatsoever man the gods hadgifted with intellect and nobleness, and power to help his country, could be chosen: O Heavens, could, --if not by Tenpound Constituenciesand the force of beer, then by a Reforming Premier with eyes in hishead, who I think might do it quite infinitely better. Infinitelybetter. For ignobleness cannot, by the nature of it, choose the noble:no, there needs a seeing man who is himself noble, cognizant by internalexperience of the symptoms of nobleness. Shall we never think of this;shall we never more remember this, then? It is forever true; and Natureand Fact, however we may rattle our ballot-boxes, do at no time forgetit. 

From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the births are bythe million, there was born, almost in our own memory, a Robert Burns;son of one who "had not capital for his poor moor-farm of TwentyPounds a year. " Robert Burns never had the smallest chance to got intoParliament, much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to havebeen found there. For the man--it was not known to men purblind, sunkin their poor dim vulgar element, but might have been known to men ofinsight who had any loyalty or any royalty of their own--was a born kingof men: full of valor, of intelligence and heroic nobleness; fit forfar other work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, gaugingbeer! Him no Tenpound Constituency chose, nor did any Reforming Premier:in the deep-sunk British Nation, overwhelmed in foggy stupor, with theloadstars all gone out for it, there was no whisper of a notion that itcould be desirable to choose him, --except to come and dine with you, andin the interim to gauge. And yet heaven-born Mr. Pitt, at that period, was by no means without need of Heroic Intellect, for other purposesthan gauging! But sorrowful strangulation by red-tape, much _tighter_then than it now is when so many revolutionary earthquakes have tussledit, quite tied up the meagre Pitt; and he said, on hearing of this Burnsand his sad hampered case, "Literature will take care of itself. "--"Yes, and of you too, if you don't mind it!" answers one. 

And so, like Apollo taken for a Neat-herd, and perhaps for none of thebest on the Admetus establishment, this new Norse Thor had to putup with what was going; to gauge ale, and be thankful; pouring hiscelestial sunlight through Scottish Song-writing, --the narrowest chinkever offered to a Thunder-god before! And the meagre Pitt, and hisDundasses and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of), did not in the least know or understand, the impious, god-forgettingmortals, that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world and for them and all of us. No;they "had done very well without" such; did not see the use of such;went along "very well" without such; well presided over by a singularHeroic Intellect called George the Third: and the Thunder-god, as wasrather fit of him, departed early, still in the noon of life, somewhatweary of gauging ale!--O Peter, what a scandalous torpid element ofyellow London fog, favorable to owls only and their mousing operations, has blotted out the stars of Heaven for us these several generationsback, --which, I rejoice to see, is now visibly about to take itself awayagain, or perhaps to be _dispelled_ in a very tremendous manner!

For the sake of my Democratic friends, one other observation. Isnot this Proposal the very essence of whatever truth there is in"Democracy;" this, that the able man be chosen, in whatever rank beis found? That he be searched for as hidden treasure is; be trained, supervised, set to the work which he alone is fit for. All Democracylies in this; this, I think, is worth all the ballot-boxes andsuffrage-movements now going. Not that the noble soul, born poor, shouldbe set to spout in Parliament, but that he should be set to assist ingoverning men: this is our grand Democratic interest. With this wecan be saved; without this, were there a Parliament spouting inevery parish, and Hansard Debates to stem the Thames, we perish, --dieconstitutionally drowned, in mere oceans of palaver. 

All reformers, constitutional persons, and men capable of reflection, are invited to reflect on these things. Let us brush the cobwebs fromour eyes; let us bid the inane traditions be silent for a moment; andask ourselves, like men dreadfully intent on having it _done_, "By whatmethod or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, notthe sham-able;--and set to do the work of governing, contriving, administering and guiding for us!" It is the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the attainment of a truer andtruer Aristocracy, or Government again by the _Best_. 

Reformed Parliaments have lamentably failed to attain it for us; and Ibelieve will and must forever fail. One true Reforming Statesman, onenoble worshipper and knower of human intellect, with the quality of anexperienced Politician too; he, backed by such a Parliament as England, once recognizing him, would loyally send, and at liberty to choose hisworking subalterns from all the Englishmen alive; he surely might dosomething? Something, by one means or another, is becoming fearfullynecessary to be done! He, I think, might accomplish more for us inten years, than the best conceivable Reformed Parliament, and utmostextension of the suffrage, in twice or ten times ten. 

What is extremely important too, you could try this method with safety;extension of the suffrage you cannot so try. With even an approximatelyheroic Prime Minister, you could get nothing but good from prescribingto him thus, to choose the fittest man, under penalties; to choose, notthe fittest of the four or the three men that were in Parliament, butthe fittest from the whole Twenty-seven Millions that he could hearof, --at his peril. Nothing but good from this. From extension ofthe suffrage, some think, you might get quite other than good. Fromextension of the suffrage, till it became a universal counting of heads, one sees not in the least what wisdom could be extracted. A Parliamentof the Paris pattern, such as we see just now, might be extracted: andfrom that? Solution into universal slush; drownage of all interestsdivine and human, in a Noah's-Deluge of Parliamentary eloquence, --suchas we hope our sins, heavy and manifold though they are, have not yetquite deserved!

Who, then, is to be the Reforming Statesman, and begin the noble workfor us? He is the preliminary; one such; with him we may prosecute theenterprise to length after length; without him we cannot stir in it atall. A true _king_, temporary king, that dare undertake the governmentof Britain, on condition of beginning in sacred earnest to "reform" it, not at this or that extremity, but at the heart and centre. That willexpurgate Downing Street, and the practical Administration of ourAffairs; clear out its accumulated mountains of pendantries and cobwebs;bid the Pedants and the Dullards depart, bid the Gifted and the Seeingenter and inhabit. So that henceforth there be Heavenly light there, instead of Stygian dusk; that God's vivifying light instead of Satan'sdeadening and killing dusk, may radiate therefrom, and visit withhealing all regions of this British Empire, --which now writhes throughevery limb of it, in dire agony as if of death! The enterprise is great, the enterprise may be called formidable and even awful; but there isnone nobler among the sublunary affairs of mankind just now. Nay tacitlyit is the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British Premierin these times;--and I cannot esteem him an enviable Premier who, because the engagement is _tacit_, flatters himself that it does notexist! "Show it me in the bond, " he says. Your Lordship, it actuallyexists: and I think you will see it yet, in another kind of "bond" thanthat sheepskin one!

But truly, in any time, what a strange feeling, enough to alarm a verybig Lordship, this: that he, of the size he is, has got to the apex ofEnglish affairs! Smallest wrens, we know, by training and the aidof machinery, are capable of many things. For this world abounds inmiraculous combinations, far transcending anything they do at Drury Lanein the melodramatic way. A world which, as solid as it looks, is madeall of aerial and even of spiritual stuff; permeated all by incalculablesleeping forces and electricities; and liable to go off, at anytime, into the hugest developments, upon a scratch thoughtfully orthoughtlessly given on the right point:--Nay, for every one of us, couldnot the sputter of a poor pistol-shot shrivel the Immensities togetherlike a burnt scroll, and make the Heavens and the Earth pass away with agreat noise? Smallest wrens, and canary-birds of some dexterity, can betrained to handle lucifer-matches; and have, before now, fired offwhole powder-magazines and parks of artillery. Perhaps without muchastonishment to the canary-bird. The canary-bird can hold only its ownquantity of astonishment; and may possibly enough retain its presence ofmind, were even Doomsday to come. It is on this principle that I explainto myself the equanimity of some men and Premiers whom we have known. 

This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect coolness. Andyet, I say, what a strange feeling, to find himself Chief Governorof England; girding on, upon his moderately sized new soul, the oldbattle-harness of an Oliver Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, a WilliamConqueror. "I, then, am the Ablest of English attainable Men? ThisEnglish People, which has spread itself over all lands and seas, andachieved such works in the ages, --which has done America, India, theLancashire Cotton-trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, Newton's Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the British Constitution, --the apex of all itsintelligences and mighty instincts and dumb longings: it is I? WilliamConqueror's big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's; Oliver's lightningsoul, noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord: these are mine, Ibegin to perceive, --to a certain extent. These heroisms have I, --thoughrather shy of exhibiting them. These; and something withal of thehuge beaver-faculty of our Arkwrights, Brindleys; touches too ofthe phoenix-melodies and _sunny_ heroisms of our Shakspeares, ofour Singers, Sages and inspired Thinkers all this is in me, I willhope, --though rather shy of exhibiting it on common occasions. ThePattern Englishman, raised by solemn acclamation upon the bucklers ofthe English People, and saluted with universal 'God save THEE!'--hasnow the honor to announce himself. After fifteen hundred years ofconstitutional study as to methods of raising on the bucklers, whichis the operation of operations, the English People, surely pretty wellskilled in it by this time, has raised--the remarkable individual nowaddressing you. The best-combined sample of whatsoever divine qualitiesare in this big People, the consummate flower of all that they have doneand been, the ultimate product of the Destinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the fulness of time, is--who think you? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by which, with all these heroisms and accumulatedenergies old and new, the English People means to smite and pierce, isthis poor tailor's-bodkin, hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, whonow has the honor to"--Good Heavens, if it were not that men generallyare very much of the canary-bird, here, are reflections sufficient toannihilate any man, almost before starting!

But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflection! This, then, is the length we have brought it to, with our constitutioning, andballot-boxing, and incessant talk and effort in every kind for somany centuries back; this? The golden flower of our grand alchemicalprojection, which has set the world in astonishment so long, and beenthe envy of surrounding nations, is--what we here see. To be governed byhis Lordship, and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by thisrespectable degree of human faculty. With our utmost soul's travail wecould discover, by the sublimest methods eulogized by all the world, noabler Englishman than this?

Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime methods, and askourselves very seriously, whether, notwithstanding the eulogy of allthe world, they can be other than extremely astonishing methods, thatrequire revisal and reconsideration very much indeed! For the kind of"man" we get to govern us, all conclusions whatsoever centre there, andlikewise all manner of issues flow infallibly therefrom. "Ask well, whois your Chief Governor, " says one: "for around him men like to him willinfallibly gather, and by degrees all the world will be made in hisimage. " "He who is himself a noble man, has a chance to know thenobleness of men; he who is not, has none. And as for the poorPublic, --alas, is not the kind of 'man' you set upon it the liveliestsymbol of its and your veracity and victory and blessedness, orunveracity and misery and cursedness; the general summation andpractical outcome of all else whatsoever in the Public and in you?"

Time was when an incompetent Governor could not be permitted among men. He was, and had to be, by one method or the other, clutched up from hisplace at the helm of affairs, and hurled down into the hold, perhapseven overboard, if he could not really steer. And we call those agesbarbarous, because they shuddered to see a Phantasm at the helm of theiraffairs; an eyeless Pilot with constitutional spectacles, steering bythe ear mainly? And we have changed all that; no-government is now thebest; and a tailor's foreman, who gives no trouble, is preferable to anyother for governing? My friends, such truly is the current idea; but youdreadfully mistake yourselves, and the fact is not such. The fact, nowbeginning to disclose itself again in distressed Needlewomen, famishingConnaughts, revolting Colonies, and a general rapid advance towardsSocial Ruin, remains really what it always was, and will so remain!

Men have very much forgotten it at present; and only here a man andthere a man begins again to bethink himself of it: but all men willgradually get reminded of it, perhaps terribly to their cost; and thesooner they all lay it to heart again, I think it will be the better. For in spite of our oblivion of it, the thing remains forever true; noris there any Constitution or body of Constitutions, were they clothedwith never such venerabilities and general acceptabilities, that availsto deliver a Nation from the consequences of forgetting it. Nature, I assure you, does forevermore remember it; and a hundred BritishConstitutions are but as a hundred cobwebs between her and the penaltyshe levies for forgetting it. Tell me what kind of man governs a People, you tell me, with much exactness, what the net sum-total of social worthin that People has for some time been. Whether _they_ have lovedthe phylacteries or the eternal noblenesses; whether they have beenstruggling heavenward like eagles, brothers of the radiances, or gropingowl-like with horn-eyed diligence, catching mice and balances at theirbanker's, --poor devils, you will see it all in that one fact. A factlong prepared beforehand; which, if it is a peaceably received one, musthave been acquiesced in, judged to be "best, " by the poor mousing owls, intent only to have a large balance at their banker's and keep a wholeskin. 

Such sordid populations, which were long blind to Heaven's light, are getting themselves burnt up rapidly, in these days, bystreet-insurrection and Hell-fire;--as is indeed inevitable, my esteemedM'Croudy! Light, accept the blessed light, if you will have it whenHeaven vouchsafes. You refuse? You prefer Delolme on the BritishConstitution, the Gospel according to M'Croudy, and a good balance atyour banker's? Very well: the "light" is more and more withdrawn; andfor some time you have a general dusk, very favorable for catchingmice; and the opulent owlery is very "happy, " and well-off at itsbanker's;--and furthermore, by due sequence, infallible as thefoundations of the Universe and Nature's oldest law, the light _returns_on you, condensed, this time, into _lightning_, which there is not anyskin whatever too thick for taking in!

No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. [April 15, 1850. ]

In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, thereis one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of ourmodern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone toanarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, Thatthey were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked inthem, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms wedesignate it, was not adequate, --probably had long been inadequate, andso in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsityto introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, andcontradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerablemeasure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared beforeall creatures to be too false. 

This is a reflection sad but important to the modern Governments nowfallen anarchic, That they had not spiritual talent enough. And if thisis so, then surely the question, How these Governments came to sink for_want_ of intellect? is a rather interesting one. Intellect, in somemeasure, is born into every Century; and the Nineteenth flatters itselfthat it is rather distinguished that way! What had become of thiscelebrated Nineteenth Century's intellect? Surely some of it existed, and was "developed" withal;--nay in the "undeveloped, " unconscious, orinarticulate state, it is not dead; but alive and at work, if mutelynot less beneficently, some think even more so! And yet Governments, itwould appear, could by no means get enough of it; almost none of it cametheir way: what had become of it? Truly there must be something veryquestionable, either in the intellect of this celebrated Century, or inthe methods Governments now have of supplying their wants from thesame. One or other of two grand fundamental shortcomings, in regard tointellect or human enlightenment, is very visible in this enlightenedCentury of ours; for it has now become the most anarchic of Centuries;that is to say, has fallen practically into such Egyptian darkness thatit cannot grope its way at all!

Nay I rather think both of these shortcomings, fatal deficits both, arechargeable upon us; and it is the joint harvest of both that we are nowreaping with such havoc to our affairs. I rather guess, the intellect ofthe Nineteenth Century, so full of miracle to Heavyside and others, is itself a mechanical or _beaver_ intellect rather than a high oreminently human one. A dim and mean though authentic kind of intellect, this; venerable only in defect of better. This kind will avail butlittle in the higher enterprises of human intellect, especially in thathighest enterprise of guiding men Heavenward, which, after all, is theone real "governing" of them on this God's-Earth:--an enterprise not tobe achieved by beaver intellect, but by other higher and highest kinds. This is deficit _first_. And then _secondly_, Governments have, reallyto a fatal and extraordinary extent, neglected in late ages to supplythemselves with what intellect was going; having, as was too naturalin the dim time, taken up a notion that human intellect, or even beaverintellect, was not necessary to them at all, but that a little ofthe _vulpine_ sort (if attainable), supported by routine, red-tapetraditions, and tolerable parliamentary eloquence on occasion, wouldvery well suffice. A most false and impious notion; leading to fatallethargy on the part of Governments, while Nature and Fact werepreparing strange phenomena in contradiction to it. 

These are two very fatal deficits;--the remedy of either of which wouldbe the remedy of both, could we but find it! For indeed they are vitallyconnected: one of them is sure to produce the other; and both once inaction together, the advent of darkness, certain enough to issue inanarchy by and by, goes on with frightful acceleration. If Governmentsneglect to invite what noble intellect there is, then too surely allintellect, not omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to becomebeaverish ignoble intellect; and quitting high aims, which seem shut upfrom it, will help itself forward in the way of making money and suchlike; or will even sink to be sham intellect, helping itself by methodswhich are not only beaverish but vulpine, and so "ignoble" as notto have common honesty. The Government, taking no thought to chooseintellect for itself, will gradually find that there is less and lessof a good quality to choose from: thus, as in all impieties it does, bad grows worse at a frightful _double_ rate of progression; and yourimpiety is twice cursed. If you are impious enough to tolerate darkness, you will get ever more darkness to tolerate; and at that inevitablestage of the account (inevitable in all such accounts) when actual lightor else destruction is the alternative, you will call to the Heavens andthe Earth for light, and none will come!

Certainly this evil, for one, has _not_ "wrought its own cure;" buthas wrought precisely the reverse, and has been hourly eating away whatpossibilities of cure there were. And so, I fear, in spite of rumors tothe contrary, it always is with evils, with solecisms against Nature, and contradictions to the divine fact of things: not an evil of them hasever wrought its own cure in my experience;--but has continually grownworse and wider and uglier, till some _good_ (generally a good _man_)not able to endure the abomination longer, rose upon it and cured orelse extinguished it. Evil Governments, divested of God's light becausethey have loved darkness rather, are not likelier than other evils towork their own cure out of that bad plight. 

It is urgent upon all Governments to pause in this fatal course;persisted in, the goal is fearfully evident; every hour's persistence init is making return more difficult. Intellect exists in all countries;and the function appointed it by Heaven, --Governments had better notattempt to contradict that, for they cannot! Intellect _has_ togovern in this world and will do it, if not in alliance with so-called"Governments" of red-tape and routine, then in divine hostility to such, and sometimes alas in diabolic hostility to such; and in the end, assure as Heaven is higher than Downing Street, and the Laws of Nature aretougher than red-tape, with entire victory over them and entire ruin tothem. If there is one thinking man among the Politicians of England, Iconsider these things extremely well worth his attention just now. 

Who are available to your Offices in Downing Street? All the giftedsouls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These areappointed, by the true eternal "divine right" which will never becomeobsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as youemploy them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favored ofHeaven or disfavored. This noble young soul, you can have him on eitherof two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, asyour natural enemy: which shall it be? I consider that every Governmentconvicts itself of infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifiesitself before God and man, according as it answers this question. Withall sublunary entities, this is the question of questions. What talentis born to you? How do you employ that? The crop of spiritual talentthat is born to you, of human nobleness and intellect and heroicfaculty, this is infinitely more important than your crops of cotton orcorn, or wine or herrings or whale-oil, which the Newspapers recordwith such anxiety every season. This is not quite counted by seasons, therefore the Newspapers are silent: but by generations and centuries, Iassure you it becomes amazingly sensible; and surpasses, as Heaven doesEarth, all the corn and wine, and whale-oil and California bullion, orany other crop you grow. If that crop cease, the other crops--please totake them also, if you are anxious about them. That once ceasing, we mayshut shop; for no other crop whatever will stay with us, nor is worthhaving if it would. 

To promote men of talent, to search and sift the whole society in everyclass for men of talent, and joyfully promote them, has not always beenfound impossible. In many forms of polity they have done it, and stilldo it, to a certain degree. The degree to which they succeed in doing itmarks, as I have said, with very great accuracy the degree of divineand human worth that is in them, the degree of success or real ultimatevictory they can expect to have in this world. --Think, for example, of the old Catholic Church, in its merely terrestrial relations to theState; and see if your reflections, and contrasts with what now is, areof an exulting character. Progress of the species has gone on as withseven-league boots, and in various directions has shot ahead amazingly, with three cheers from all the world; but in this direction, the mostvital and indispensable, it has lagged terribly, and has evenmoved backward, till now it is quite gone out of sight in clouds ofcotton-fuzz and railway-scrip, and has fallen fairly over the horizon torearward!

In those most benighted Feudal societies, full of mere tyrannous steelBarons, and totally destitute of Tenpound Franchises and Ballot-boxes, there did nevertheless authentically preach itself everywhere thisgrandest of gospels, without which no other gospel can avail us much, to all souls of men, "Awake ye noble souls; here is a noble career foryou!" I say, everywhere a road towards promotion, for human nobleness, lay wide open to all men. The pious soul, --which, if you reflect, will mean the ingenuous and ingenious, the gifted, intelligent andnobly-aspiring soul, --such a soul, in whatever rank of life it wereborn, had one path inviting it; a generous career, whereon, by humanworth and valor, all earthly heights and Heaven itself were attainable. In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble souldoomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. The Church, poor old benightedcreature, had at least taken care of that: the noble aspiring soul, notdoomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into theneighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there;strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be hadfrom writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self, --really to human nobleness in manymost essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is theresome human nobleness in you, or is there not?" The poor neat-herd'sson, if he were a Noble of Nature, might rise to Priesthood, toHigh-priesthood, to the top of this world, --and best of all, he hadstill high Heaven lying high enough above him, to keep his head steady, on whatever height or in whatever depth his way might lie!

A thrice-glorious arrangement, when I reflect on it; most salutary toall high and low interests; a truly human arrangement. You made the bornnoble yours, welcoming him as what he was, the Sent of Heaven: you didnot force him either to die or become your enemy; idly neglecting orsuppressing him as what he was not, a thing of no worth. You acceptedthe blessed _light_; and in the shape of infernal _lightning_ it needednot to visit you. How, like an immense mine-shaft through the dimoppressed strata of society, this Institution of the Priesthood ran;opening, from the lowest depths towards all heights and towards Heavenitself, a free road of egress and emergence towards virtuous nobleness, heroism and well-doing, for every born man. This we may call the livinglungs and blood-circulation of those old Feudalisms. When I think ofthat immeasurable all-pervading lungs; present in every corner of humansociety, every meanest hut a _cell_ of said lungs; inviting whatsoevernoble pious soul was born there to the path that was noble for him;and leading thereby sometimes, if he were worthy, to be the Papaof Christendom, and Commander of all Kings, --I perceive how the oldChristian society continued healthy, vital, and was strong and heroic. When I contrast this with the noble aims now held out to noble soulsborn in remote huts, or beyond the verge of Palace-Yard; and think ofwhat your Lordship has done in the way of making priests and papas, --Isee a society without lungs, fast wheezing itself to death, in horridconvulsions; and deserving to die. 

Over Europe generally in these years, I consider that the State hasdied, has fairly coughed its last in street musketry, and fallen downdead, incapable of any but _galvanic_ life henceforth, --owing to thissame fatal want of _lungs_, which includes all other wants for a State. And furthermore that it will never come alive again, till it contriveto get such indispensable vital apparatus; the outlook toward whichconsummation is very distant in most communities of Europe. If you letit come to death or suspended animation in States, the case is verybad! Vain to call in universal-suffrage parliaments at that stage:the universal-suffrage parliaments cannot give you any breath of life, cannot find any _wisdom_ for you; by long impiety, you have let thesupply of noble human wisdom die out; and the wisdom that now courtsyour universal suffrages is beggarly human _attorneyism_ or sham-wisdom, which is _not_ an insight into the Laws of God's Universe, but into thelaws of hungry Egoism and the Devil's Chicane, and can in the end profitno community or man. 

No; the kind of heroes that come mounted on the shoulders of theuniversal suffrage, and install themselves as Prime Ministers andhealing Statesmen by force of able editorship, do not bid very fairto bring Nations back to the ways of God. Eloquent high-lacquered_pinchbeck_ specimens these, expert in the arts of Belialmainly;--fitter to be markers at some exceedingly expensivebilliard-table than sacred chief-priests of men! "Greeks of the LowerEmpire;" with a varnish of parliamentary rhetoric; and, I suppose, this other great gift, toughness of character, --proof that they have_persevered_ in their Master's service. Poor wretches, their industryis mob-worship, place-worship, parliamentary intrigue, and the multiplexart of tongue-fence: flung into that bad element, there they swim fordecades long, throttling and wrestling one another according to theirstrength, --and the toughest or luckiest gets to land, and becomesPremier. A more entirely unbeautiful class of Premiers was never rakedout of the ooze, and set on high places, by any ingenuity of man. DameDubarry's petticoat was a better seine-net for fishing out Premiers thanthat. Let all Nations whom necessity is driving towards that method, take warning in time!

Alas, there is, in a manner, but one Nation that can still take warning!In England alone of European Countries the State yet survives; and mighthelp itself by better methods. In England heroic wisdom is not yet dead, and quite replaced by attorneyism: the honest beaver faculty yet aboundswith us, the heroic manful faculty shows itself also to the observanteye, not dead but dangerously sleeping. I said there were many _kings_in England: if these can yet be rallied into strenuous activity, and setto govern England in Downing Street and elsewhere, which their functionalways is, --then England can be saved from anarchies and universalsuffrages; and that Apotheosis of Attorneyism, blackest of terrestrialcurses, may be spared us. If these cannot, the other issue, in suchforms as may be appropriate to us, is inevitable. What escape is there?England must conform to the eternal laws of life, or England too mustdie!

England with the largest mass of real living interests ever intrusted toa Nation; and with a mass of extinct imaginary and quite dead interestspiled upon it to the very Heavens, and encumbering it from shore toshore, --does reel and stagger ominously in these years; urged by theDivine Silences and the Eternal Laws to take practical hold of itsliving interests and manage them: and clutching blindly into itsvenerable extinct and imaginary interests, as if that were still the wayto do it. England must contrive to manage its living interests, and quitits dead ones and their methods, or else depart from its place in thisworld. Surely England is called as no Nation ever was, to summon out its_kings_, and set them to that high work!--Huge inorganic England, nighchoked under the exuviae of a thousand years, and blindly sprawling amidchartisms, ballot-boxes, prevenient graces, and bishops' nightmares, must, as the preliminary and commencement of organization, learn to_breathe_ again, --get "lungs" for herself again, as we defined it. Thatis imperative upon her: she too will die, otherwise, and cough her lastupon the streets some day;--how can she continue living? To enfranchisewhatsoever of Wisdom is born in England, and set that to the sacredtask of coercing and amending what of Folly is born in England: Heaven'sblessing is purchasable by that; by not that, only Heaven's curse ispurchasable. The reform contemplated, my liberal friends perceive, isa truly radical one; no ballot-box ever went so deep into the roots: aradical, most painful, slow and difficult, but most indispensable reformof reforms!

How short and feeble an approximation to these high ulterior results, the best Reform of Downing Street, presided over by the fittestStatesman one can imagine to exist at present, would be, is too apparentto me. A long time yet till we get our living interests put under dueadministration, till we get our dead interests handsomely dismissed. Along time yet till, by extensive change of habit and ways of thinkingand acting, _we_ get living "lungs" for ourselves! Nevertheless, byReform of Downing Street, we do begin to breathe: we do start in the waytowards that and all high results. Nor is there visible to me any otherway. Blessed enough were the way once entered on; could we, in our evildays, but see the noble enterprise begun, and fairly in progress!

What the "_New_ Downing Street" can grow to, and will and must ifEngland is to have a Downing Street beyond a few years longer, it isfar from me, in my remote watch-tower, to say with precision. A DowningStreet inhabited by the gifted of the intellects of England; directingall its energies upon the real and living interests of England, andsilently but incessantly, in the alembics of the place, burning up theextinct imaginary interests of England, that we may see God's sky alittle plainer overhead, and have all of us a great accession of "heroicwisdom" to dispose of: such a Downing Street--to draw the plan of it, will require architects; many successive architects and builders willbe needed there. Let not editors, and remote unprofessional persons, interfere too much!--Change in the present edifice, however, radicalchange, all men can discern to be inevitable; and even, if there shallnot worse swiftly follow, to be imminent. Outlines of the future edificepaint themselves against the sky (to men that still have a sky, andare above the miserable London fogs of the hour); noble elements of newState Architecture, foreshadows of a new Downing Street for the New Erathat is come. These with pious hope all men can see; and it is goodthat all men, with whatever faculty they have, were earnestly lookingthitherward;--trying to get above the fogs, that they might lookthitherward!

Among practical men the idea prevails that Government can do nothingbut "keep the peace. " They say all higher tasks are unsafe for it, impossible for it, --and in fine not necessary for it or for us. On thisfooting a very feeble Downing Street might serve the turn!--I am wellaware that Government, for a long time past, has taken in hand no otherpublic task, and has professed to have no other, but that of keepingthe peace. This public task, and the private one of ascertainingwhether Dick or Jack was to do it, have amply filled the capabilitiesof Government for several generations now. Hard tasks both, it wouldappear. In accomplishing the first, for example, have not heaven-bornChancellors of the Exchequer had to shear us very bare; and to leave anoverplus of Debt, or of fleeces shorn _before_ they are grown, justlyesteemed among the wonders of the world? Not a first-rate keeping of thepeace, this, we begin to surmise! At least it seems strange to us. 

For we, and the overwhelming majority of all our acquaintances, in thisParish and Nation and the adjacent Parishes and Nations, are profoundlyconscious to ourselves of being by nature peaceable persons; followingour necessary industries; without wish, interest or faintest intentionto cut the skin of any mortal, to break feloniously into his industrialpremises, or do any injustice to him at all. Because indeed, independentof Government, there is a thing called conscience, and we dare not. So that it cannot but appear to us, "the peace, " under dexterousmanagement, might be very much more easily kept, your Lordship; nay, we almost think, if well let alone, it would in a measure keep _itself_among such a set of persons! And how it happens that when a poorhardworking creature of us has laboriously earned sixpence, theGovernment comes in, and (as some compute) says, "I will thank you forthreepence of that, as per account, for getting you peace to spend theother threepence, " our amazement begins to be considerable, --and I thinkresults will follow from it by and by. Not the most dexterous keepingof the peace, your Lordship, unless it be more difficult to do thanappears!

Our domestic peace, we cannot but perceive, as good as keeps itself. Here and there a select Equitable Person, appointed by the Publicfor that end, clad in ermine, and backed by certain companies ofblue Police, is amply adequate, without immoderate outlay in money orotherwise, to keep down the few exceptional individuals of the scoundrelkind; who, we observe, by the nature of them, are always weak andinconsiderable. And as to foreign peace, really all Europe, nowespecially with so many railroads, public journals, printed books, penny-post, bills of exchange, and continual intercourse and mutualdependence, is more and more becoming (so to speak) one Parish; theParishioners of which being, as we ourselves are, in immense majoritypeaceable hard-working people, could, if they were moderately wellguided, have almost no disposition to quarrel. Their economic interestsare one, "To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest;" theirfaith, any _religious_ faith they have, is one, "To annihilate shams--byall methods, street-barricades included. " Why should they quarrel?The Czar of Russia, in the Eastern parts of the Parish, may have othernotions; but he knows too well he must keep them to himself. He, ifhe meddled with the Western parts, and attempted anywhere to crush ordisturb that sacred Democratic Faith of theirs, is aware there wouldrise from a hundred and fifty million human throats such a _Hymn of theMarseillaise_ as was never heard before; and England, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and the Nine Kingdoms, hurling themselves upon him innever-imagined fire of vengeance, would swiftly reduce his Russia andhim to a strange situation! Wherefore he forbears, --and being a personof some sense, will long forbear. In spite of editorial prophecy, theCzar of Russia does not disturb our night's rest. And with the otherparts of the Parish our dreams and our thoughts are of anything but offighting, or of the smallest need to fight. 

For keeping of the peace, a thing highly desirable to us, we strive tobe grateful to your Lordship. Intelligible to us, also, your Lordship'sreluctance to get out of the old routine. But we beg to say farther, that peace by itself has no feet to stand upon, and would not suit useven if it had. Keeping of the peace is the function of a policeman, andbut a small fraction of that of any Government, King or Chief of men. Are not all men bound, and the Chief of men in the name of all, to doproperly this: To see, so far as human effort under pain of eternalreprobation can, God's Kingdom incessantly advancing here below, and Hiswill done on Earth as it is in Heaven? On Sundays your Lordship knowsthis well; forgot it not on week-days. I assure you it is forevermore afact. That is the immense divine and never-ending task which is laid onevery man, and with unspeakable increase of emphasis on every Governmentor Commonwealth of men. Your Lordship, that is the basis upon whichpeace and all else depends! That basis once well lost, there is no peacecapable of being kept, --the only peace that could then be kept is thatof the churchyard. Your Lordship may depend on it, whatever thing takesupon it the name of Sovereign or Government in an English Nation suchas this will have to get out of that old routine; and set about keepingsomething very different from the peace, in these days!

Truly it is high time that same beautiful notion of No-Government shouldtake itself away. The world is daily rushing towards wreck, while thatlasts. If your Government is to be a Constituted Anarchy, what issue canit have? Our one interest in such Government is, that it would be kindenough to cease and go its ways, _before_ the inevitable arrive. Thequestion, Who is to float atop no-whither upon the popular vertexes, and act that sorry character, "carcass of the drowned ass upon themud-deluge"? is by no means an important one for almost anybody, --hardlyeven for the drowned ass himself. Such drowned ass ought to ask himself, If the function is a sublime one? For him too, though he looks sublimeto the vulgar and floats atop, a private situation, down out of sight inhis natural ooze, would be a luckier one. 

Crabbe, speaking of constitutional philosophies, faith in the ballot-boxand such like, has this indignant passage: "If any voice of deliveranceor resuscitation reach us, in this our low and all but lost estate, sunkalmost beyond plummet's sounding in the mud of Lethe, and oblivious ofall noble objects, it will be an intimation that we must put away allthis abominable nonsense, and understand, once more, that ConstitutedAnarchy, with however many ballot-boxes, caucuses, and hustingsbeer-barrels, is a continual offence to gods and men. That to begoverned by small men is not only a misfortune, but it is a curse anda sin; the effect, and alas the cause also, of all manner of curses andsins. That to profess subjection to phantasms, and pretend to acceptguidance from fractional parts of tailors, is what Smelfungus in hisrude dialect calls it, 'a damned _lie_, ' and nothing other. A lie which, by long use and wont, we have grown accustomed to, and do not the leastfeel to be a lie, having spoken and done it continually everywhere forsuch a long time past;--but has Nature grown to accept it as a veracity, think you, my friend? Have the Parcae fallen asleep, because you wantedto make money in the City? Nature at all moments knows well that it isa lie; and that, like all lies, it is cursed and damned from thebeginning. 

"Even so, ye indigent millionnaires, and miserable bankrupt populationsrolling in gold, --whose note-of-hand will go to any length inThreadneedle Street, and to whom in Heaven's Bank the stern answer is, 'No effects!' Bankrupt, I say; and Californias and Eldorados will notsave us. And every time we speak such lie, or do it or look it, as wehave been incessantly doing, and many of us with clear consciousness, for about a hundred and fifty years now, Nature marks down the exactpenalty against us. 'Debtor to so much lying: forfeiture of existingstock of worth to such extent;--approach to general damnation by somuch. ' Till now, as we look round us over a convulsed anarchic Europe, and at home over an anarchy not yet convulsed, but only heaving towardsconvulsion, and to judge by the Mosaic sweating-establishments, cannibalConnaughts and other symptoms, not far from convulsion now, we seem tohave pretty much _exhausted_ our accumulated stock of worth; and unlessmoney's 'worth' and bullion at the Bank will save us, to be rubbing veryclose upon that ulterior bourn which I do not like to name again!

"On behalf of nearly twenty-seven millions of my fellow-countrymen, sunkdeep in Lethean sleep, with mere owl-dreams of Political Economy andmice-catching, in this pacific thrice-infernal slush-element; andalso of certain select thousands, and hundreds and units, awakened orbeginning to awaken from it, and with horror in their hearts perceivingwhere they are, I beg to protest, and in the name of God to say, withpoor human ink, desirous much that I had divine thunder to say it with, Awake, arise, --before you sink to death eternal! Unnamable destruction, and banishment to Houndsditch and Gehenna, lies in store for all Nationsthat, in angry perversity or brutal torpor and owlish blindness, neglectthe eternal message of the gods, and vote for the Worse while the Betteris there. Like owls they say, 'Barabbas will do; any orthodox Hebrewof the Hebrews, and peaceable believer in M'Croudy and the Faith ofLeave-alone will do: the Right Honorable Minimus is well enough; heshall be our Maximus, under him it will be handy to catch mice, andOwldom shall continue a flourishing empire. '"

One thing is undeniable, and must be continually repeated till it getto be understood again: Of all constitutions, forms of government, andpolitical methods among men, the question to be asked is even this, Whatkind of man do you set over us? All questions are answered in the answerto this. Another thing is worth attending to: No people or populace, with never such ballot-boxes, can select such man for you; only the manof worth can recognize worth in men;--to the commonplace man of no orof little worth, you, unless you wish to be _mis_led, need not apply onsuch an occasion. Those poor Tenpound Franchisers of yours, they are noteven in earnest; the poor sniffing sniggering Honorable Gentlemen theysend to Parliament are as little so. Tenpound Franchisers full of merebeer and balderdash; Honorable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to anAlmack's series of evening parties, or big cockmain (battle of all thecocks) very amusing to witness and bet upon: what can or could men inthat predicament ever do for you? Nay, if they were in life-and-deathearnest, what could it avail you in such a case? I tell you, a millionblockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and hisqualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end oftime. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they shouldunderstand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are, --this, which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyallysay, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler andwiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee. "

The question therefore arises, Whether, since reform of parliament andsuch like have done so little in that respect, the problem might notbe with some hope attacked in the direct manner? Suppose all ourInstitutions, and Public Methods of Procedure, to continue for thepresent as they are; and suppose farther a Reform Premier, and theEnglish Nation once awakening under him to a due sense of the infiniteimportance, nay the vital necessity there is of getting able and ablermen:--might not some heroic wisdom, and actual "ability" to do what mustbe done, prove discoverable to said Premier; and so the indispensableHeaven's-blessing descend to us from _above_, since none has yetsprung from below? From above we shall have to try it; the otheris exhausted, --a hopeless method that! The utmost passion of thehouse-inmates, ignorant of masonry and architecture, cannot avail tocure the house of smoke: not if _they_ vote and agitate forever, andbestir themselves to the length even of street-barricades, will the_smoke_ in the least abate: how can it? Their passion exercised in suchways, till Doomsday, will avail them nothing. Let their passion ragesteadily against the existing major-domos to this effect, "_Find_ usmen skilled in house-building, acquainted with the laws of atmosphericsuction, and capable to cure smoke;" something might come of it! In thelucky circumstance of having one man of real intellect and courage toput at the head of the movement, much would come of it;--a New DowningStreet, fit for the British Nation and its bitter necessities in thisNow Era, would come; and from that, in answer to continuous sacredfidelity and valiant toil, all good whatsoever would gradually come. 

Of the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy, "--if this should alarmany reader, --I can see no risk or possibility in England. Democracyis hot enough here, fierce enough; it is perennial, universal, clearlyinvincible among us henceforth. No danger it should let itself be flungin chains by sham secretaries of the Pedant species, and accept theirvile Age of Pinchbeck for its Golden Age! Democracy clamors, with itsNewspapers, its Parliaments, and all its twenty-seven million throats, continually in this Nation forevermore. I remark, too, that, theunconscious purport of all its clamors is even this, "Find us menskilled, "--_make_ a New Downing Street, fit for the New Era!

Of the Foreign Office, in its reformed state, we have not much to say. Abolition of imaginary work, and replacement of it by real, is on allhands understood to be very urgent there. Large needless expendituresof money, immeasurable ditto of hypocrisy and grimace; embassies, protocols, worlds of extinct traditions, empty pedantries, foulcobwebs:--but we will by no means apply the "live coal" of our wittyfriend; the Foreign Office will repent, and not be driven to suicide! Atruer time will come for the Continental Nations too: Authorities basedon truth, and on the silent or spoken Worship of Human Nobleness, will again get themselves established there; all Sham-Authorities, andconsequent Real-Anarchies based on universal suffrage and the Gospelaccording to George Sand, being put away; and noble action, heroicnew-developments of human faculty and industry, and blessed fruit asof Paradise getting itself conquered from the waste battle-field ofthe chaotic elements, will once more, there as here, begin to showthemselves. 

When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of _their_Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternalfacts again, our Foreign Office may again have extensive concerns withthem. And at all times, and even now, there will remain the question tobe sincerely put and wisely answered, What essential concern _has_ theBritish Nation with them and their enterprises? Any concern at all, except that of handsomely keeping apart from them? If so, what arethe methods of best managing it?--At present, as was said, while RedRepublic but clashes with foul Bureaucracy; and Nations, sunk inblind ignavia, demand a universal-suffrage Parliament to heal theirwretchedness; and wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle withSham-Kingship and extinct or galvanized Catholicism; and in the Cave ofthe Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled againsteach other, --our English interest in the controversy, however huge saidcontroversy grow, is quite trifling; we have only in a handsome mannerto say to it: "Tumble and rage along, ye rotten waifs and wrecks;clash and collide as seems fittest to you; and smite each other intoannihilation at your own good pleasure. In that huge conflict, dismalbut unavoidable, we, thanks to our heroic ancestors, having got so farahead of you, have now no interest at all. Our decided notion is, thedead ought to bury their dead in such a case: and so we have thehonor to be, with distinguished consideration, your entirelydevoted, --FLIMNAP, SEC. FOREIGN DEPARTMENT. "--I really think Flimnap, till truer times come, ought to treat much of his work in this way:cautious to give offence to his neighbors; resolute not to concernhimself in any of their self-annihilating operations whatsoever. 

Foreign wars are sometimes unavoidable. We ourselves, in the course ofnatural merchandising and laudable business, have now and then got intoambiguous situations; into quarrels which needed to be settled, andwithout fighting would not settle. Sugar Islands, Spice Islands, Indias, Canadas, these, by the real decree of Heaven, were ours; and nobodywould or could believe it, till it was tried by cannon law, and soproved. Such cases happen. In former times especially, owing very muchto want of intercourse and to the consequent mutual ignorance, there didoccur misunderstandings: and therefrom many foreign wars, some ofthem by no means unnecessary. With China, or some distant country, toounintelligent of us and too unintelligible to us, there still sometimesrises necessary occasion for a war. Nevertheless wars--misunderstandingsthat get to the length of arguing themselves out by sword andcannon--have, in these late generations of improved intercourse, beenpalpably becoming less and less necessary; have in a manner becomesuperfluous, if we had a little wisdom, and our Foreign Office on a goodfooting. 

Of European wars I really hardly remember any, since Oliver Cromwell'slast Protestant or Liberation war with Popish antichristian Spain sometwo hundred years ago, to which I for my own part could have contributedmy life with any heartiness, or in fact would have subscribed moneyitself to any considerable amount. Dutch William, a man of some heroism, did indeed get into troubles with Louis Fourteenth; and there restedstill some shadow of Protestant Interest, and question of National andindividual Independence, over those wide controversies; a little moneyand human enthusiasm was still due to Dutch William. Illustrious Chathamalso, not to speak of his Manilla ransoms and the like, did one thing:assisted Fritz of Prussia, a brave man and king (almost the onlysovereign King I have known since Cromwell's time) like to be borne downby ignoble men and sham-kings; for this let illustrious Chatham too havea little money and human enthusiasm, --a little, by no means much. Butwhat am I to say of heaven-born Pitt the son of Chatham? England sentforth her fleets and armies; her money into every country; money asif the heaven-born Chancellor had got a Fortunatus' purse; as if thisIsland had become a volcanic fountain of gold, or new terrestrial suncapable of radiating mere guineas. The result of all which, what wasit? Elderly men can remember the tar-barrels burnt for success andthrice-immortal victory in the business; and yet what result had we? TheFrench Revolution, a Fact decreed in the Eternal Councils, could notbe put down: the result was, that heaven-born Pitt had actually beenfighting (as the old Hebrews would have said) against the Lord, --thatthe Laws of Nature were stronger than Pitt. Of whom therefore thereremains chiefly his unaccountable radiation of guineas, for thegratitude of posterity. Thank you for nothing, --for eight hundredmillions _less_ than nothing!

Our War Offices, Admiralties, and other Fighting Establishments, areforcing themselves on everybody's attention at this time. Bull grumblesaudibly: "The money you have cost me these five-and-thirty years, duringwhich you have stood elaborately ready to fight at any moment, withoutat any moment being called to fight, is surely an astonishing sum. TheNational Debt itself might have been half paid by that money, which hasall gone in pipe-clay and blank cartridges! "Yes, Mr. Bull, themoney can be counted in hundreds of millions; which certainly issomething:--but the "strenuously organized idleness, " and what mischiefthat amounts to, --have you computed it? A perpetual solecism, andblasphemy (of its sort), set to march openly among us, dressed inscarlet! Bull, with a more and more sulky tone, demands that suchsolecism be abated; that these Fighting Establishments be as it weredisbanded, and set to do some work in the Creation, since fightingthere is now none for them. This demand is irrefragably just, is growingurgent too; and yet this demand cannot be complied with, --not yet whilethe State grounds itself on unrealities, and Downing Street continueswhat it is. 

The old Romans made their soldiers work during intervals of war. The NewDowning Street too, we may predict, will have less and less tolerancefor idleness on the part of soldiers or others. Nay the New DowningStreet, I foresee, when once it has got its "_Industrial_ Regiments"organized, will make these mainly do its fighting, what fightingthere is; and so save immense sums. Or indeed, all citizens of theCommonwealth, as is the right and the interest of every free man inthis world, will have themselves trained to arms; each citizen ready todefend his country with his own body and soul, --he is not worthy to havea country otherwise. In a State grounded on veracities, that would bethe rule. Downing Street, if it cannot bethink itself of returning tothe veracities, will have to vanish altogether!

To fight with its neighbors never was, and is now less than ever, thereal trade of England. For far other objects was the English Peoplecreated into this world; sent down from the Eternities, to mark with itshistory certain spaces in the current of sublunary Time! Essential, too, that the English People should discover what its real objects are; andresolutely follow these, resolutely refusing to follow other than these. The State will have victory so far as it can do that; so far as itcannot, defeat. 

In the New Downing Street, discerning what its real functions are, andwith sacred abhorrence putting away from it what its functions are not, we can fancy changes enough in Foreign Office, War Office, ColonialOffice, Home Office! Our War-soldiers _Industrial_, first of all;doing nobler than Roman works, when fighting is not wanted of them. Seventy-fours not hanging idly by their anchors in the Tagus, or offSapienza (one of the saddest sights under the sun), but busy, everySeventy-four of them, carrying over streams of British Industrials tothe immeasurable Britain that lies beyond the sea in every zone of theworld. A State grounding itself on the veracities, not on the semblancesand the injustices: every citizen a soldier for it. Here would be new_real_ Secretaryships and Ministries, not for foreign war and diplomacy, but for domestic peace and utility. Minister of Works; Minister ofJustice, --clearing his Model Prisons of their scoundrelism; shipping hisscoundrels wholly abroad, under hard and just drill-sergeants (hundredsof such stand wistfully ready for you, these thirty years, in theRag-and-Famish Club and elsewhere!) into fertile desert countries;to make railways, --one big railway (says the Major [Footnote: MajorCarmichael Smith; see his Pamphlets on this subject]) quite acrossAmerica; fit to employ all the able-bodied Scoundrels and efficientHalf-pay Officers in Nature!

Lastly, --or rather firstly, and as the preliminary of all, would therenot be a Minister of Education? Minister charged to get this EnglishPeople taught a little, at his and our peril! Minister of Education;no longer dolefully embayed amid the wreck of moribund "religions, " butclear ahead of all that; steering, free and piously fearless, towardshis divine goal under the eternal stars!--O heaven, and are these thingsforever impossible, then? Not a whit. To-morrow morning they might allbegin to be, and go on through blessed centuries realizing themselves, if it were not that--alas, if it were not that we are most of usinsincere persons, sham talking-machines and hollow windy fools! Whichit is not "impossible" that we should cease to be, I hope?

Constitutions for the Colonies are now on the anvil; the discontentedColonies are all to be cured of their miseries by Constitutions. Whetherthat will cure their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's-cordial tostop their whimpering, and in the end worsen all their miseries, maybe a sad doubt to us. One thing strikes a remote spectator in theseColonial questions: the singular placidity with which the BritishStatesman at this time, backed by M'Croudy and the British moneyedclasses, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, asfoundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in thedecision. "If you want to go from us, go; we by no means want you tostay: you cost us money yearly, which is scarce; desperate quantitiesof trouble too: why not go, if you wish it?" Such is the humor of theBritish Statesman, at this time. --Men clear for rebellion, "annexation"as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies; foundnewspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes duly byeach mail a regular statistic of Annexationism: increasing fast in thisquarter, diminishing in that;--Majesty's Chief Governor seeming to takeit as a perfectly open question; Majesty's Chief Governor in fact seldomappearing on the scene at all, except to receive the impact of afew rotten eggs on occasion, and then duck in again to his privatecontemplations. And yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governorought to have a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carriedto a great length in some portions of her Majesty's dominions. Butthe question, "Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or startrebelling against her? So many as are for rebelling, hold up yourhands!" Here is a public discussion of a very extraordinary nature tobe going on under the nose of a Governor of Canada. How the Governorof Canada, being a British piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadianlumber-log of mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivableat first view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It isa constitutional sight like few. 

And yet an instinct deeper than the Gospel of M'Croudy teaches allmen that Colonies are worth something to a country! That if, under thepresent Colonial Office, they are a vexation to us and themselves, someother Colonial Office can and must be contrived which shall render thema blessing; and that the remedy will be to contrive such a ColonialOffice or method of administration, and by no means to cut the Coloniesloose. Colonies are not to be picked off the street every day; not aColony of them but has been bought dear, well purchased by the toiland blood of those we have the honor to be sons of; and we cannot justafford to cut them away because M'Croudy finds the present managementof them cost money. The present management will indeed require to be cutaway;--but as for the Colonies, we purpose through Heaven's blessing toretain them a while yet! Shame on us for unworthy sons of brave fathersif we do not. Brave fathers, by valiant blood and sweat, purchased forus, from the bounty of Heaven, rich possessions in all zones; and we, wretched imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering them? Andbecause the accounts do not stand well in the ledger, our remedy is, notto take shame to ourselves, and repent in sackcloth and ashes, andamend our beggarly imbecilities and insincerities in that as in otherdepartments of our business, but to fling the business overboard, anddeclare the business itself to be bad? We are a hopeful set of heirs toa big fortune! It does not suit our Manton gunneries, grouse-shootings, mousings in the City; and like spirited young gentlemen we will give itup, and let the attorneys take it?

Is there no value, then, in human things, but what can write itself downin the cash-ledger? All men know, and even M'Croudy in his inarticulateheart knows, that to men and Nations there are invaluable values whichcannot be sold for money at all. George Robins is great; but he is notonmipotent. George Robins cannot quite sell Heaven and Earth by auction, excellent though he be at the business. Nay, if M'Croudy offered his ownlife for _sale_ in Threadneedle Street, would anybody buy it? Not I, forone. "Nobody bids: pass on to the next lot, " answers Robins. And yet toM'Croudy this unsalable lot is worth all the Universe:--nay, I believe, to us also it is worth something; good monitions, as to several things, do lie in this Professor of the dismal science; and considerable sumseven of money, not to speak of other benefit, will yet come out of hislife and him, for which nobody bids! Robins has his own field where hereigns triumphant; but to that we will restrict him with iron limits;and neither Colonies nor the lives of Professors, nor other suchinvaluable objects shall come under his hammer. 

Bad state of the ledger will demonstrate that your way of dealingwith your Colonies is absurd, and urgently in want of reform; but todemonstrate that the Empire itself must be dismembered to bring theledger straight? Oh never. Something else than the ledger must interveneto do that. Why does not England repudiate Ireland, and insist on the"Repeal, " instead of prohibiting it under death-penalties? Ireland hasnever been a paying speculation yet, nor is it like soon to be! Why doesnot Middlesex repudiate Surrey, and Chelsea Kensington, and each countyand each parish, and in the end each individual set up for himselfand his cash-box, repudiating the other and his, because their mutualinterests have got into an irritating course? They must change thecourse, seek till they discover a soothing one; that is the remedy, whenlimbs of the same body come to irritate one another. Because the paltrytatter of a garment, reticulated for you out of thrums and listings inDowning Street, ties foot and hand together in an intolerable manner, will you relieve yourself by cutting off the hand or the foot? You willcut off the paltry tatter of a pretended body-coat, I think, and flingthat to the nettles; and imperatively require one that fits your sizebetter. 

Miserabler theory than that of money on the ledger being the primaryrule for Empires, or for any higher entity than City owls and theirmice-catching, cannot well be propounded. And I would by no means adviseFelicissimus, ill at ease on his high-trotting and now justly impatientSleswicker, to let the poor horse in its desperation go in thatdirection for a momentary solace. If by lumber-log Governors, byGodfrey's cordial Constitutions or otherwise, be contrived to cutoff the Colonies or any real right the big British Empire has in herColonies, both he and the British Empire will bitterly repent it oneday! The Sleswicker, relieved in ledger for a moment, will find thatit is wounded in heart and honor forever; and the turning of its wildforehoofs upon Felicissimus as he lies in the ditch combed off, is nota thing I like to think of! Britain, whether it be known to Felicissimusor not, has other tasks appointed her in God's Universe than the makingof money; and woe will betide her if she forget those other withal. Tasks, colonial and domestic, which are of an eternally _divine_ nature, and compared with which all money, and all that is procurable by money, are in strict arithmetic an imponderable quantity, have been assignedthis Nation; and they also at last are coming upon her again, clamorous, abstruse, inevitable, much to her bewilderment just now!

This poor Nation, painfully dark about said tasks and the way of doingthem, means to keep its Colonies nevertheless, as things which somehowor other must have a value, were it better seen into. They are portionsof the general Earth, where the children of Britain now dwell; where thegods have so far sanctioned their endeavor, as to say that they have aright to dwell. England will not readily admit that her own childrenare worth nothing but to be flung out of doors! England looking on herColonies can say: "Here are lands and seas, spice-lands, corn-lands, timber-lands, overarched by zodiacs and stars, clasped by many-soundingseas; wide spaces of the Maker's building, fit for the cradle yet ofmighty Nations and their Sciences and Heroisms. Fertile continentsstill inhabited by wild beasts are mine, into which all the distressedpopulations of Europe might pour themselves, and make at once an OldWorld and a New World human. By the eternal fiat of the gods, thismust yet one day be; this, by all the Divine Silences that rule thisUniverse, silent to fools, eloquent and awful to the hearts of the wise, is incessantly at this moment, and at all moments, commanded to begin tobe. Unspeakable deliverance, and new destiny of thousand-fold expandedmanfulness for all men, dawns out of the Future here. To me has fallenthe godlike task of initiating all that: of me and of my Colonies, theabstruse Future asks, Are you wise enough for so sublime a destiny? Areyou too foolish?"

That you ask advice of whatever wisdom is to be had in the Colony, andeven take note of what _un_wisdom is in it, and record that too as anexisting fact, will certainly be very advantageous. But I suspect thekind of Parliament that will suit a Colony is much of a secret just now!Mr. Wakefield, a democratic man in all fibres of him, and acquaintedwith Colonial Socialities as few are, judges that the franchise foryour Colonial Parliament should be decidedly select, and advises a highmoney-qualification; as there is in all Colonies a fluctuating migratorymass, not destitute of money, but very much so of loyalty, permanency, or civic availability; whom it is extremely advantageous not to consulton what you are about attempting for the Colony or Mother Country. ThisI can well believe;--and also that a "high money-qualification, " inthe present sad state of human affairs, might be some help to youin selecting; though whether even that would quite certainly bring"wisdom, " the one thing indispensable, is much a question with me. Itmight help, it might help! And if by any means you could (which youcannot) exclude the Fourth Estate, and indicate decisively that WiseAdvice was the thing wanted here, and Parliamentary Eloquence was notthe thing wanted anywhere just now, --there might really some light ofexperience and human foresight, and a truly valuable benefit, be foundfor you in such assemblies. 

And there is one thing, too apt to be forgotten, which it much behoovesus to remember: In the Colonies, as everywhere else in this world, thevital point is not who decides, but what is decided on! That measurestending really to the best advantage temporal and spiritual of theColony be adopted, and strenuously put in execution; there liesthe grand interest of every good citizen British and Colonial. Suchmeasures, whosoever have originated and prescribed them, will graduallybe sanctioned by all men and gods; and clamors of every kind inreference to them may safely to a great extent be neglected, asclamorous merely, and sure to be transient. Colonial Governor, ColonialParliament, whoever or whatever does an injustice, or resolves on an_un_wisdom, he is the pernicious object, however parliamentary he be!

I have known things done, in this or the other Colony, in the mostparliamentary way before now, which carried written on the brow of themsad symptoms of eternal reprobation; not to be mistaken, had you paintedan inch thick. In Montreal, for example, at this moment, standing amidthe ruins of the "Elgin Marbles" (as they call the burnt walls of theParliament House there), what rational British soul but is forced toinstitute the mournfulest constitutional reflection? Some years ago theCanadas, probably not without materials for discontent, and blown uponby skilful artists, blazed up into crackling of musketry, open flame ofrebellion; a thing smacking of the gallows in all countries that pretendto have any "Government. " Which flame of rebellion, had there been noloyal population to fling themselves upon it at peril of their life, might have ended we know not how. It ended speedily, in the good way;Canada got a Godfrey's-cordial Constitution; and for the moment all wasvarnished into some kind of feasibility again. A most poor feasibility;momentary, not lasting, nor like to be of profit to Canada! For thisyear, the Canadian most constitutional Parliament, such a congeriesof persons as one can imagine, decides that the aforesaid flame ofrebellion shall not only be forgotten as per bargain, but that--theloyal population, who flung their lives upon it and quenched it in thenick of time, shall pay the rebels their damages! Of this, I believe, on sadly conclusive evidence, there is no doubt whatever. Such, when youwash off the constitutional pigments, is the Death's-head that disclosesitself. I can only say, if all the Parliaments in the world were tovote that such a thing was just, I should feel painfully constrained toanswer, at my peril, "No, by the Eternal, never!" And I would recommendany British Governor who might come across that Business, there or here, to overhaul it again. What the meaning of a Governor, if he is notto overhaul and control such things, may be, I cannot conjecture. ACanadian Lumber-log may as well be made Governor. _He_ might havesome cast-metal hand or shoulder-crank (a thing easily contrivable inBirmingham) for signing his name to Acts of the Colonial Parliament; hewould be a "native of the country" too, with popularity on that score ifon no other;--he is your man, if you really want a Log Governor!--

I perceive therefore that, besides choosing Parliaments never so well, the New Colonial Office will have another thing to do: Contrive to sendout a new kind of Governors to the Colonies. This will be the mainspringof the business; without this the business will not go at all. Anexperienced, wise and valiant British man, to represent the ImperialInterest; he, with such a speaking or silent Collective Wisdom as he cangather round him in the Colony, will evidently be the condition of allgood between the Mother Country and it. If you can find such a man, yourpoint is gained; if you cannot, lost. By him and his Collective Wisdomall manner of _true_ relations, mutual interests and duties such as theydo exist in fact between Mother Country and Colony, can be graduallydeveloped into practical methods and results; and all manner of true andnoble successes, and veracities in the way of governing, be won. Choose well your Governor;--not from this or that poor section of theAristocracy, military, naval, or red-tapist; wherever there are bornkings of men, you had better seek them out, and breed them to this work. All sections of the British Population will be open to you: and, on thewhole, you must succeed in finding a man _fit_. And having found him, Iwould farther recommend you to keep him some time! It would be a greatimprovement to end this present nomadism of Colonial Governors. Giveyour Governor due power; and let him know withal that he is wedded tohis enterprise, and having once well learned it, shall continue with it;that it is not a Canadian Lumber-log you want there, to tumble uponthe vertexes and sign its name by a Birmingham shoulder-crank, buta Governor of Men; who, you mean, shall fairly gird himself to hisenterprise, and fail with it and conquer with it, and as it were liveand die with it: he will have much to learn; and having once learned it, will stay, and turn his knowledge to account. 

From this kind of Governor, were you once in the way of finding himwith moderate certainty, from him and his Collective Wisdom, all goodwhatsoever might be anticipated. And surely, were the Coloniesonce enfranchised from red-tape, and the poor Mother Country onceenfranchised from it; were our idle Seventy-fours all busy carryingout streams of British Industrials, and those Scoundrel Regiments allworking, under divine drill-sergeants, at the grand Atlantic and PacificJunction Railway, --poor Britain and her poor Colonies might find thatthey _had_ true relations to each other: that the Imperial _Mother_ andher constitutionally obedient Daughters were not a red-tape fiction, provoking bitter mockery as at present, but a blessed God's-Factdestined to fill half the world with its fruits one day!

But undoubtedly our grand primary concern is the Home Office, and itsIrish Giant named of Despair. When the Home Office begins dealing withthis Irish Giant, which it is vitally urgent for us the Home Officeshould straightway do, it will find its duties enlarged to a mostunexpected extent, and, as it were, altered from top to bottom. Achanged time now when the question is, What to do with three millionsof paupers (come upon you for food, since you have no work for them)increasing at a frightful rate per day? Home Office, Parliament, King, Constitution will find that they have now, if they will continue in thisworld long, got a quite immense new question and continually recurringset of questions. That huge question of the Irish Giant with his Scotchand English Giant-Progeny advancing open-mouthed upon us, will, as Icalculate, change from top to bottom not the Home Office only butall manner of Offices and Institutions whatsoever, and gradually thestructure of Society itself. I perceive, it will make us a new Society, if we are to continue a Society at all. For the alternative is not, Staywhere we are, or change? But Change, with new wise effort fit for thenew time, to true and wider nobler National Life; or Change, by indolentfolding of the arms, as we are now doing, in horrible anarchies andconvulsions to Dissolution, to National Death, or Suspended-animation?Suspended-animation itself is a frightful possibility for Britain: thisAnarchy whither all Europe has preceded us, where all Europe is nowweltering, would suit us as ill as any! The question for the BritishNation is: Can we work our course pacifically, on firm land, into theNew Era; or must it be, for us too, as for all the others, through blackabysses of Anarchy, hardly escaping, if we do with all our strugglesescape, the jaws of eternal Death?

For Pauperism, though it now absorbs its high figure of millionsannually, is by no means a question of money only, but of infinitelyhigher and greater than all conceivable money. If our Chancellor of theExchequer had a Fortunatus' purse, and miraculous sacks of Indian mealthat would stand scooping from forever, --I say, even on these termsPauperism could not be endured; and it would vitally concern all BritishCitizens to abate Pauperism, and never rest till they had ended itagain. Pauperism is the general leakage through every joint of the shipthat it is rotten. Were all men doing their duty, or even seriouslytrying to do it, there would be no Pauper. Were the pretended Captainsof the world at all in the habit of commanding; were the pretendedTeachers of the world at all in the habit of teaching, --of admonishingsaid Captains among others, and with sacred zeal apprising them to whatplace such neglect was leading, --how could Pauperism exist? Pauperismwould lie far over the horizon; we should be lamenting and denouncingquite inferior sins of men, which were only tending afar off towardsPauperism. A true Captaincy; a true Teachership, either making all menand Captains know and devoutly recognize the eternal law of things, orelse breaking its own heart, and going about with sackcloth round itsloins, in testimony of continual sorrow and protest, and prophecy ofGod's vengeance upon such a course of things: either of these divineequipments would have saved us; and it is because we have neither ofthem that we are come to such a pass!

We may depend upon it, where there is a Pauper, there is a sin; tomake one Pauper there go many sins. Pauperism is our Social Sin grownmanifest; developed from the state of a spiritual ignobleness, apractical impropriety and base oblivion of duty, to an affair of theledger. Here is not now an unheeded sin against God; here is a concreteugly bulk of Beggary demanding that you should buy Indian meal for it. Men of reflection have long looked with a horror for which there was noresponse in the idle public, upon Pauperism; but the quantity of meal itdemands has now awakened men of no reflection to consider it. Pauperismis the poisonous dripping from all the sins, and putrid unveracities andgod-forgetting greedinesses and devil-serving cants and jesuitisms, thatexist among us. Not one idle Sham lounging about Creation upon falsepretences, upon means which he has not earned, upon theories which hedoes not practise, but yields his share of Pauperism somewhere orother. His sham-work oozes down; finds at last its issue as humanPauperism, --in a human being that by those false pretences cannot live. The Idle Workhouse, now about to burst of overfilling, what is itbut the scandalous poison-tank of drainage from the universal Stygianquagmire of our affairs? Workhouse Paupers; immortal sons of Adam rottedinto that scandalous condition, subter-slavish, demanding that you wouldmake slaves of them as an unattainable blessing! My friends, I perceivethe quagmire must be drained, or we cannot live. And farther, Iperceive, this of Pauperism is the corner where we must _begin_, --thelevels all pointing thitherward, the possibilities lying all clearlythere. On that Problem we shall find that innumerable things, that allthings whatsoever hang. By courageous steadfast persistence in that, Ican foresee Society itself regenerated. In the course of long strenuouscenturies, I can see the State become what it is actually bound to be, the keystone of a most real "Organization of Labor, "--and on this Eartha world of some veracity, and some heroism, once more worth living in!

The State in all European countries, and in England first of all, as Ihope, will discover that its functions are now, and have long been, verywide of what the State in old pedant Downing Streets has aimed at;that the State is, for the present, not a reality but in great part adramatic speciosity, expending its strength in practices and objectsfallen many of them quite obsolete; that it must come a little nearerthe true aim again, or it cannot continue in this world. The "Championof England" eased in iron or tin, and "able to mount his horse withlittle assistance, "--this Champion and the thousand-fold cousinry ofPhantasms he has, nearly all dead now but still walking as ghosts, must positively take himself away: who can endure him, and his solemntrumpetings and obsolete gesticulations, in a Time that is full ofdeadly realities, coming open-mouthed upon us? At Drury Lane, let himplay his part, him and his thousand-fold cousinry; and welcome, so longas any public will pay a shilling to see him: but on the solid earth, under the extremely earnest stars, we dare not palter with him, oraccept his tomfooleries any more. Ridiculous they seem to some; horriblethey seem to me: all lies, if one look whence they come and whither theygo, are horrible. 

Alas, it will be found, I doubt, that in England more than in anycountry, our Public Life and our Private, our State and our Religion, and all that we do and speak (and the most even of what we _think_), is a tissue of half-truths and whole-lies; of hypocrisies, conventionalisms, worn-out traditionary rags and cobwebs; such alife-garment of beggarly incredible and uncredited falsities as nohonest souls of Adam's Posterity were ever enveloped in before. And wewalk about in it with a stately gesture, as if it were some priestlystole or imperial mantle; not the foulest beggar's gabardine that everwas. "No Englishman dare believe the truth, " says one: "he stands, forthese two hundred years, enveloped in lies of every kind; from nadir tozenith an ocean of traditionary cant surrounds him as his life-element. He really thinks the truth dangerous. Poor wretch, you see himeverywhere endeavoring to temper the truth by taking the falsityalong with it, and welding them together; this he calls 'safe course, ''moderate course, ' and other fine names; there, balanced between God andthe Devil, he thinks he _can_ serve two masters, and that things will gowell with him. "

In the cotton-spinning and similar departments our English friendknows well that truth or God will have nothing to do with the Devil orfalsehood, but will ravel all the web to pieces if you introducethe Devil or Non-veracity in any form into it: in this department, therefore, our English friend avoids falsehood. But in the religious, political, social, moral, and all other spiritual departments he freelyintroduces falsehood, nothing doubting; and has long done so, with aprofuseness not elsewhere met with in the world. The unhappy creature, does he not know, then, that every lie is accursed, and the parent ofmere curses? That he must _think_ the truth; much more speak it? That, above all things, by the oldest law of Heaven and Earth which no manviolates with impunity, he must not and shall not wag the tongue ofhim except to utter his thought? That there is not a grin or beautifulacceptable grimace he can execute upon his poor countenance, but iseither an express veracity, the image of what passes within him; or elseis a bit of Devil-worship which he and the rest of us will have to payfor yet? Alas, the grins he executes upon his poor _mind_ (which is alltortured into St. Vitus dances, and ghastly merry-andrewisms, by thepractice) are the most extraordinary this sun ever saw. 

We have Puseyisms, black-and-white surplice controversies:--do not, officially and otherwise, the select of the longest heads in Englandsit with intense application and iron gravity, in open forum, judging of"prevenient grace"? Not a head of them suspects that it can be improperso to sit, or of the nature of treason against the Power who gave anIntellect to man;--that it can be other than the duty of a good citizento use his god-given intellect in investigating prevenient grace, supervenient moonshine, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, if thathappened to turn up. I consider them far ahead of Cicero's Roman Augurswith their chicken-bowels: "Behold these divine chicken-bowels, O Senateand Roman People; the midriff has fallen eastward!" solemnly intimatesone Augur. "By Proserpina and the triple Hecate!" exclaims the other, "I say the midriff has fallen to the west!" And they look at one anotherwith the seriousness of men prepared to die in their opinion, --theauthentic seriousness of men betting at Tattersall's, or about toreceive judgment in Chancery. There is in the Englishman somethinggreat, beyond all Roman greatness, in whatever line you meet him; evenas a Latter-Day Augur he seeks his fellow!--Poor devil, I believe it ishis intense love of peace, and hatred of breeding discussions which leadno-whither, that has led him into this sad practice of amalgamating trueand false. 

He has been at it these two hundred years; and has now carried it to aterrible length. He couldn't follow Oliver Cromwell in the Puritanpath heavenward, so steep was it, and beset with thorns, --and becominguncertain withal. He much preferred, at that juncture, to go heavenwardwith his Charles Second and merry Nell Gwynns, and old decentformularies and good respectable aristocratic company, for escort; sorehe tried, by glorious restorations, glorious revolutions and soforth, to perfect this desirable amalgam; hoped always it might bepossible;--is only just now, if even now, beginning to give up thehope; and to see with wide-eyed horror that it is not at Heaven heis arriving, but at the Stygian marshes, with their thirty thousandNeedlewomen, cannibal Connaughts, rivers of lamentation, continual wailof infants, and the yellow-burning gleam of a Hell-on-Earth!--Bull, myfriend, you must strip that astonishing pontiff-stole, imperial mantle, or whatever you imagine it to be, which I discern to be a garment ofcurses, and poisoned Nessus'-shirt now at last about to take fire uponyou; you must strip that off your poor body, my friend; and, were itonly in a soul's suit of Utilitarian buff, and such belief as that abig loaf is better than a small one, come forth into contact with yourworld, under _true_ professions again, and not false. You wretched man, you ought to weep for half a century on discovering what lies you havebelieved, and what every lie leads to and proceeds from. O my friend, nohonest fellow in this Planet was ever so served by his cooks before; orhas eaten such quantities and qualities of dirt as you have been madeto do, for these two centuries past. Arise, my horribly maltreated yetstill beloved Bull; steep yourself in running water for a long while, myfriend; and begin forthwith in every conceivable direction, physical andspiritual, the long-expected _Scavenger Age_. 

Many doctors have you had, my poor friend; but I perceive it is theWater-Cure alone that will help you: a complete course of _scavengerism_is the thing you need! A new and veritable heart-divorce of England fromthe Babylonish woman, who is Jesuitism and Unveracity, and dwells notat Rome now, but under your own nose and everywhere; whom, and her foulworship of Phantasms and Devils, poor England _had_ once divorced, witha divine heroism not forgotten yet, and well worth remembering now: a Phantasms which have too long nestled thick there, under thoseastonishing "Defenders of the Faith, "--Defenders of the Hypocrisies, thespiritual Vampires and obscene Nightmares, under which England lies insyncope;--this is what you need; and if you cannot get it, you must die, my poor friend!

Like people, like priest. Priest, King, Home Office, all manner ofestablishments and offices among a people bear a striking resemblance tothe people itself. It is because Bull has been eating so much dirt thathis Home Offices have got into such a shockingly dirty condition, --theold pavements of them quite gone out of sight and out of memory, andnothing but mountains of long-accumulated dung in which the poor cattleare sprawling and tumbling. Had his own life been pure, had his owndaily conduct been grounding itself on the clear pavements or actualbeliefs and veracities, would he have let his Home Offices come to sucha pass? Not in Downing Street only, but in all other thoroughfares andarenas and spiritual or physical departments of his existence, runningwater and Herculean scavengerism have become indispensable, unless thepoor man is to choke in his own exuviae, and die the sorrowfulest death. 

If the State could once get back to the real sight of its essentialfunction, and with religious resolution begin doing that, and puttingaway its multifarious imaginary functions, and indignantly casting outthese as mere dung and insalubrious horror and abomination (which theyare), what a promise of reform were there! The British Home Office, surely this and its kindred Offices exist, if they will think of it, that life and work may continue possible, and may not become impossible, for British men. If honorable existence, or existence on human termsat all, have become impossible for millions of British men, how canthe Home Office or any other Office long exist? With thirty thousandNeedlewomen, a Connaught fallen into potential cannibalism, and the IdleWorkhouse everywhere bursting, and declaring itself an inhumanity andstupid ruinous brutality not much longer to be tolerated among rationalhuman creatures, it is time the State were bethinking itself. 

So soon as the State attacks that tremendous cloaca of Pauperism, whichwill choke the world if it be not attacked, the State will find its realfunctions very different indeed from what it had long supposed them!The State is a reality, and not a dramaturgy; it exists here to renderexistence possible, existence desirable and noble, for the State'ssubjects. The State, as it gets into the track of its real work, willfind that same expand into whole continents of new unexpected, mostblessed activity; as its dramatic functions, declared superfluous, more and more fall inert, and go rushing like huge torrents of extinctexuviae, dung and rubbish, down to the Abyss forever. O Heaven, to seea State that knew a little why it was there, and on what ground, in thisYear 1850, it could pretend to exist, in so extremely earnest a world asours is growing! The British State, if it will be the crown and keystoneof our British Social Existence, must get to recognize, with a veracityvery long unknown to it, what the real objects and indispensablenecessities of our Social Existence are. Good Heavens, it is notprevenient grace, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, that ispinching us; it is the impossibility to get along any farther formountains of accumulated dung and falsity and horror; the totalclosing-up of noble aims from every man, --of any aim at all, from manymen, except that of rotting out in Idle Workhouses an existence belowthat of beasts!

Suppose the State to have fairly started its "Industrial Regiments ofthe New Era, " which alas, are yet only beginning to be talked of, --whatcontinents of new real work opened out, for the Home and all otherPublic Offices among us! Suppose the Home Office looking out, as forlife and salvation, for proper men to command these "Regiments. " Supposethe announcement were practically made to all British souls that thewant of wants, more indispensable than any jewel in the crown, was thatof men _able to command men_ in ways of industrial and moral well-doing;that the State would give its very life for such men; that such men_were_ the State; that the quantity of them to be found in Englandlamentably small at present, was the exact measure of England'sworth, --what a new dawn of everlasting day for all British souls! NobleBritish soul, to whom the gods have given faculty and heroism, what mencall genius, here at last is a career for thee. It will not be needfulnow to swear fealty to the Incredible, and traitorously cramp thyselfinto a cowardly canting play-actor in God's Universe; or, solemnlyforswearing that, into a mutinous rebel and waste bandit in thygeneration: here is an aim that is clear and credible, a course fitfor a man. No need to become a tormenting and self-tormenting mutineer, banded with rebellious souls, if thou wouldst live; no need to rot insuicidal idleness; or take to platform preaching, and writing in RadicalNewspapers, to pull asunder the great Falsity in which thou and all ofus are choking. The great Falsity, behold it has become, in the veryheart of it, a great Truth of Truths; and invites thee and all brave mento cooperate with it in transforming all the body and the joints intothe noble likeness of that heart! Thrice-blessed change. The State aims, once more, with a true aim; and has loadstars in the eternal Heaven. Struggle faithfully for it; noble is _this_ struggle; thou too, according to thy faculty, shalt reap in due time, if thou faint not. Thou shalt have a wise command of men, thou shalt be wisely commanded bymen, --the summary of all blessedness for a social creature here below. The sore struggle, never to be relaxed, and not forgiven to any son ofman, is once more a noble one; glory to the Highest, it is now once morea true and noble one, wherein a man can afford to die! Our path is nowagain Heavenward. Forward, with steady pace, with drawn weapons, andunconquerable hearts, in the name of God that made us all!--

Wise obedience and wise command, I foresee that the regimenting ofPauper Banditti into Soldiers of Industry is but the beginning ofthis blessed process, which will extend to the topmost heights of ourSociety; and, in the course of generations, make us all once more aGoverned Commonwealth, and _Civitas Dei_, if it please God! Waste-landIndustrials succeeding, other kinds of Industry, as cloth-making, shoe-making, plough-making, spade-making, house-building, --in the end, all kinds of Industry whatsoever, will be found capable of regimenting. Mill-operatives, all manner of free operatives, as yet unregimented, nomadic under private masters, they, seeing such example and itsblessedness, will say: "Masters, you must regiment us a little; make ourinterests with you permanent a little, instead of temporary and nomadic;we will enlist with the State otherwise!" This will go on, on the onehand, while the State-operation goes on, on the other: thus willall Masters of Workmen, private Captains of Industry, be forced toincessantly co-operate with the State and its public Captains; theyregimenting in their way, the State in its way, with ever-wideningfield; till their fields _meet_ (so to speak) and coalesce, and there beno unregimented worker, or such only as are fit to remain unregimented, any more. --O my friends, I clearly perceive this horrible cloaca ofPauperism, wearing nearly bottomless now, is the point where wemust begin. Here, in this plainly unendurable portion of the generalquagmire, the lowest point of all, and hateful even to M'Croudy, mustour main drain begin: steadily prosecuting that, tearing that along withHerculean labor and divine fidelity, we shall gradually drain the entireStygian swamp, and make it all once more a fruitful field!

For the State, I perceive, looking out with right sacred earnestness forpersons able to command, will straightway also come upon the question:"What kind of schools and seminaries, and teaching and also preachingestablishments have I, for the training of young souls to take commandand to yield obedience? Wise command, wise obedience: the capability ofthese two is the net measure of culture, and human virtue, in every man;all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these. He is a good man thatcan command and obey; he that cannot is a bad. If my teachers and mypreachers, with their seminaries, high schools and cathedrals, do trainmen to these gifts, the thing they are teaching and preaching must betrue; if they do not, not true!"

The State, once brought to its veracities by the thumb-screw in thismanner, what will it think of these same seminaries and cathedrals!I foresee that our Etons and Oxfords with their nonsense-verses, college-logics, and broken crumbs of mere _speech_, --which is not evenEnglish or Teutonic speech, but old Grecian and Italian speech, deadand buried and much lying out of our way these two thousand years lastpast, --will be found a most astonishing seminary for the training ofyoung English souls to take command in human Industries, and act avaliant part under the sun! The State does not want vocables, but manlywisdoms and virtues: the State, does it want parliamentary orators, first of all, and men capable of writing books? What a rag-fair ofextinct monkeries, high-piled here in the very shrine of our existence, fit to smite the generations with atrophy and beggarly paralysis, --as wesee it do! The Minister of Education will not want for work, I think, inthe New Downing Street!

How it will go with Souls'-Overseers, and what the _new_ kind will be, we do not prophesy just now. Clear it is, however, that the last finishof the State's efforts, in this operation of regimenting, will be to getthe _true_ Souls'-Overseers set over men's souls, to regiment, as theconsummate flower of all, and constitute into some Sacred Corporation, bearing authority and dignity in their generation, the Chosen of theWise, of the Spiritual and Devout-minded, the Reverent who deservereverence, who are as the Salt of the Earth;--that not till this is donecan the State consider its edifice to have reached the first story, tobe safe for a moment, to be other than an arch without the keystones, and supported hitherto on mere wood. How will this be done? Ask not; letthe second or the third generation after this begin to ask!--Alas, wisemen do exist, born duly into the world in every current generation; butthe getting of _them_ regimented is the highest pitch of human Polity, and the feat of all feats in political engineering:--impossible for us, in this poor age, as the building of St. Paul's would be for CanadianBeavers, acquainted only with the architecture of fish-dams, and with notrowel but their tail. 

Literature, the strange entity so called, --that indeed is here. IfLiterature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, andhave its Johnsons, Goethes and _true_ Archbishops of the World, to showfor itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literaturedwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round forhalfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature. Whatif our next set of Souls'-Overseers were to be _silent_ ones verymainly?--Alas, alas, why gaze into the blessed continents and delectablemountains of a Future based on _truth_, while as yet we struggle fardown, nigh suffocated in a slough of lies, uncertain whether or how weshall be able to climb at all!

Who will begin the long steep journey with us; who of living statesmenwill snatch the standard, and say, like a hero on the forlorn-hope forhis country, Forward! Or is there none; no one that can and dare? Andour lot too, then, is Anarchy by barricade or ballot-box, and SocialDeath?--We will not think so. 

Whether Sir Robert Peel will undertake the Reform of Downing Street forus, or any Ministry or Reform farther, is not known. He, they say, isgetting old, does himself recoil from it, and shudder at it; which ispossible enough. The clubs and coteries appear to have settled thathe surely will not; that this melancholy wriggling seesaw of red-tapeTrojans and Protectionist Greeks must continue its course till--what_can_ happen, my friends, if this go on continuing?

And yet, perhaps, England has by no means so settled it. Quit the clubsand coteries, you do not hear two rational men speak long together uponpolitics, without pointing their inquiries towards this man. A Ministerthat will attack the Augeas Stable of Downing Street, and beginproducing a real Management, no longer an imaginary one, of our affairs;_he_, or else in few years Chartist Parliament and the Deluge come: thatseems the alternative. As I read the omens, there was no man in my timemore authentically called to a post of difficulty, of danger, and ofhonor than this man. The enterprise is ready for him, if he is ready forit. He has but to lift his finger in this enterprise, and whatsoeveris wise and manful in England will rally round him. If the faculty andheart for it be in him, he, strangely and almost tragically if we lookupon his history, is to have leave to try it; he now, at the eleventhhour, has the opportunity for such a feat in reform as has not, in theselate generations, been attempted by all our reformers put together. 

As for Protectionist jargon, who in these earnest days would occupy manymoments of his time with that? "A Costermonger in this street, " saysCrabbe, "finding lately that his rope of onions, which he hoped wouldhave brought a shilling, was to go for only sevenpence henceforth, burstforth into lamentation, execration and the most pathetic tears. Throwingup the window, I perceived the other costermongers preparing impatientlyto pack this one out of their company as a disgrace to it, if he wouldnot hold his peace and take the market-rate for his onions. Ilooked better at this Costermonger. To my astonished imagination, astar-and-garter dawned upon the dim figure of the man; and I perceivedthat here was no Costermonger to be expelled with ignominy, but asublime goddess-born Ducal Individual, whom I forbear to name at thismoment! What an omen;--nay to my astonished imagination, there dawnedstill fataler omens. Surely, of all human trades ever heard of, thetrade of Owning Land in England ought _not_ to bully us for drink--moneyjust now!"

"Hansard's Debates, " continues Crabbe farther on, "present manyinconsistencies of speech; lamentable unveracities uttered inParliament, by one and indeed by all; in which sad list Sir Robert Peelstands for his share among others. Unveracities not a few were spoken inParliament: in fact, to one with a sense of what is called God's truth, it seemed all one unveracity, a talking from the teeth outward, not asthe convictions but as the expediencies and inward astucities directed;and, in the sense of God's _truth_, I have heard no true word uttered inParliament at all. Most lamentable unveracities continually _spoken_ inParliament, by almost every one that had to open his mouth there. Butthe largest veracity ever _done_ in Parliament in our time, as we allknow, was of this man's doing;--and that, you will find, is a veryconsiderable item in the calculation!"

Yes, and I believe England in her dumb way remembers that too. And"the Traitor Peel" can very well afford to let innumerable DucalCostermongers, parliamentary Adventurers, and lineal representatives ofthe Impenitent Thief, say all their say about him, and do all their do. With a virtual England at his back, and an actual eternal sky above him, there is not much in the total net-amount of that. When the master ofthe horse rides abroad, many dogs in the village bark; but he pursueshis journey all the same. 

No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. [May 1, 1850. ]

It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational andother arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talentas best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Ourearliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech;rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we maynot only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters inthe highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under variousfigures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, buton all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongueor pen, --this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficentpreceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, arecontinually urging and guiding us. Preceptor or professor, looking overhis miraculous seedplot, seminary as he well calls it, or crop of younghuman souls, watches with attentive view one organ of his delightfullittle seedlings growing to be men, --the tongue. He hopes we shallall get to speak yet, if it please Heaven. "Some of you shall bebook-writers, eloquent review-writers, and astonish mankind, my youngfriends: others in white neckcloths shall do sermons by Blair andLindley Murray, nay by Jeremy Taylor and judicious Hooker, and bepriests to guide men heavenward by skilfully brandished handkerchief andthe torch of rhetoric. For others there is Parliament and the electionbeer-barrel, and a course that leads men very high indeed; these shallshake the senate-house, the Morning Newspapers, shake the very spheres, and by dexterous wagging of the tongue disenthrall mankind, and lead ourafflicted country and us on the way we are to go. The way if not wherenoble deeds are done, yet where noble words are spoken, --leading us ifnot to the real Home of the Gods, at least to something which shall moreor less deceptively resemble it!"

So fares it with the son of Adam, in these bewildered epochs; so, fromthe first opening of his eyes in this world, to his last closing ofthem, and departure hence. Speak, speak, oh speak;--if thou haveany faculty, speak it, or thou diest and it is no faculty! So inuniversities, and all manner of dames' and other schools, of the veryhighest class as of the very lowest; and Society at large, when weenter there, confirms with all its brilliant review-articles, successfulpublications, intellectual tea-circles, literary gazettes, parliamentaryeloquences, the grand lesson we had. Other lesson in fact we have none, in these times. If there be a human talent, let it get into the tongue, and make melody with that organ. The talent that can say nothing foritself, what is it? Nothing; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, andat best make money by railways. 

All this is deep-rooted in our habits, in our social, educational andother arrangements; and all this, when we look at it impartially, isastonishing. Directly in the teeth of all this it may be asserted thatspeaking is by no means the chief faculty a human being can attain to;that his excellence therein is by no means the best test of his generalhuman excellence, or availability in this world; nay that, unless welook well, it is liable to become the very worst test ever devised forsaid availability. The matter extends very far, down to the very rootsof the world, whither the British reader cannot conveniently follow mejust now; but I will venture to assert the three following things, andinvite him to consider well what truth he can gradually find in them:--

First, that excellent speech, even speech _really_ excellent, is not, and never was, the chief test of human faculty, or the measure of aman's ability, for any true function whatsoever; on the contrary, thatexcellent _silence_ needed always to accompany excellent speech, and wasand is a much rarer and more difficult gift. 

_Secondly_, that really excellent speech--which I, being possessedof the Hebrew Bible or Book, as well as of other books in my own andforeign languages, and having occasionally heard a wise man's word amongthe crowd of unwise, do almost unspeakably esteem, as a human gift--isterribly apt to get confounded with its counterfeit, sham-excellentspeech! And furthermore, that if really excellent human speech is amongthe best of human things, then sham-excellent ditto deserves to beranked with the very worst. False speech, --capable of becoming, as someone has said, the falsest and basest of all human things:--put the case, one were listening to _that_ as to the truest and noblest! Which, littleas we are conscious of it, I take to be the sad lot of many excellentsouls among us just now. So many as admire parliamentary eloquence, divine popular literature, and such like, are dreadfully liable toit just now: and whole nations and generations seem as if gettingthemselves _asphyxiaed_, constitutionally into their last sleep, bymeans of it just now!

For alas, much as we worship speech on all hands, here is a _third_assertion which a man may venture to make, and invite considerate mento reflect upon: That in these times, and for several generations back, there has been, strictly considered, no really excellent speech at all, but sham-excellent merely; that is to say, false or quasi-falsespeech getting itself admired and worshipped, instead of detested andsuppressed. A truly alarming predicament; and not the less so if we findit a quite pleasant one for the time being, and welcome the advent ofasphyxia, as we would that of comfortable natural sleep;--as, in somany senses, we are doing! Surly judges there have been who did not muchadmire the "Bible of Modern Literature, " or anything you could distilfrom it, in contrast with the ancient Bibles; and found that in thematter of speaking, our far best excellence, where that could beobtained, was excellent silence, which means endurance and exertion, andgood work with lips closed; and that our tolerablest speech was of thenature of honest commonplace introduced where indispensable, whichonly set up for being brief and true, and could not be mistaken forexcellent. 

These are hard sayings for many a British reader, unconscious of anydamage, nay joyfully conscious to himself of much profit, from that sideof his possessions. Surely on this side, if on no other, matters stoodnot ill with him? The ingenuous arts had softened his manners; theparliamentary eloquences supplied him with a succedaneum for government, the popular literatures with the finer sensibilities of the heart:surely on this _wind_ward side of things the British reader was not illoff?--Unhappy British reader!

In fact, the spiritual detriment we unconsciously suffer, in everyprovince of our affairs, from this our prostrate respect to power ofspeech is incalculable. For indeed it is the natural consummation ofan epoch such as ours. Given a general insincerity of mind for severalgenerations, you will certainly find the Talker established in theplace of honor; and the Doer, hidden in the obscure crowd, with activitylamed, or working sorrowfully forward on paths unworthy of him. Allmen are devoutly prostrate, worshipping the eloquent talker; and no manknows what a scandalous idol he is. Out of whom in the mildestmanner, like comfortable natural rest, comes mere asphyxia and deatheverlasting! Probably there is not in Nature a more distracted phantasmthan your commonplace eloquent speaker, as he is found on platforms, in parliaments, on Kentucky stumps, at tavern-dinners, in windy, empty, insincere times like ours. The "excellent Stump-orator, " as our admiringYankee friends define him, he who in any occurrent set of circumstancescan start forth, mount upon his "stump, " his rostrum, tribune, placein parliament, or other ready elevation, and pour forth from himhis appropriate "excellent speech, " his interpretation of the saidcircumstances, in such manner as poor windy mortals round him shall crybravo to, --he is not an artist I can much admire, as matters go! Alas, he is in general merely the windiest mortal of them all; and is admiredfor being so, into the bargain. Not a windy blockhead there who keptsilent but is better off than this excellent stump-orator. Better off, for a great many reasons; for this reason, were there no other: thesilent one is not admired; the silent suspects, perhaps partly admits, that he is a kind of blockhead, from which salutary self-knowledgethe excellent stump-orator is debarred. A mouthpiece of Chaos to poorbenighted mortals that lend ear to him as to a voice from Cosmos, thisexcellent stump-orator fills me with amazement. Not empty these musicalwind-utterances of his; they are big with prophecy; they announce, tooaudibly to me, that the end of many things is drawing nigh!

Let the British reader consider it a little; he too is not a littleinterested in it. Nay he, and the European reader in general, but hechiefly in these days, will require to consider it a great deal, --and totake important steps in consequence by and by, if I mistake not. And inthe mean while, sunk as he himself is in that bad element, and like ajaundiced man struggling to discriminate yellow colors, --he will have tomeditate long before he in any measure get the immense meanings of thething brought home to him; and discern, with astonishment, alarm, andalmost terror and despair, towards what fatal issues, in our CollectiveWisdom and elsewhere, this notion of talent meaning eloquent speech, soobstinately entertained this long while, has been leading us! Whosoevershall look well into origins and issues, will find this of eloquenceand the part it now plays in our affairs, to be one of the gravestphenomena; and the excellent stump-orator of these days to be not onlya ridiculous but still more a highly tragical personage. While themany listen to him, the few are used to pass rapidly, with some gust ofscornful laughter, some growl of impatient malediction; but he deservesfrom this latter class a much more serious attention. 

In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first instituted, this function of the schoolmaster, to teach mere speaking, was thenatural one. In those healthy times, guided by silent instincts and themonition of Nature, men had from of old been used to teach themselveswhat it was essential to learn, by the one sure method of learninganything, practical apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for allclasses; as it now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class. TheWorking Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himselfsufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, andin fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then asnow and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him;teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges;developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and toendure, --among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn fromspoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar ofNature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficientfor him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the WorkingMan. 

As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading andspeaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, ifneedful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. Byfar the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverenceto God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spokenor silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark humandestinies;--not so much that he should possess the art of speech, asthat he should have something to speak! And for that latter requisitethe Priest also trained himself by apprenticeship, by actual attemptto practise, by manifold long-continued trial, of a devout and painfulnature, such as his superiors prescribed to him. This, when once judgedsatisfactory, procured him ordination; and his grammar-learning, inthe good times of priesthood, was very much of a parergon with him, as indeed in all times it is intrinsically quite insignificant incomparison. 

The young Noble again, for whom grammar schoolmasters were first hiredand high seminaries founded, he too without these, or above and overthese, had from immemorial time been used to learn his business byapprenticeship. The young Noble, before the schoolmaster as after him, went apprentice to some elder noble; entered himself as page with somedistinguished earl or duke; and here, serving upwards from step to step, under wise monition, learned his chivalries, his practice of arms andof courtesies, his baronial duties and manners, and what it would beseemhim to do and to be in the world, --by practical attempt of his own, andexample of one whose life was a daily concrete pattern for him. To sucha one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing whatwe may call the practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was anobvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him onoccasion; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible on demandfor what of "gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, storedin the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic worthalready acquired for him, naturally demanded of the schoolmaster thisone new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. Avaluable superaddition of faculty:--and yet we are to remember it wasscarcely a new faculty; it was but the tangible sign of whatother faculties the man had in the silent state: and many a ruggedinarticulate chief of men, I can believe, was most enviably"educated, " who had not a Book on his premises; whose signature, a truesign-_manual_, was the stamp of his iron hand duly inked and clapt uponthe parchment; and whose speech in Parliament, like the growl of lions, did indeed convey his meaning, but would have torn Lindley Murray'snerves to pieces! To such a one the schoolmaster adjusted himself verynaturally in that manner; as a man wanted for teaching grammaticalutterance; the thing to utter being already there. The thing to utter, here was the grand point! And perhaps this is the reason why amongearnest nations, as among the Romans for example, the craft of theschoolmaster was held in little regard; for indeed as mere teacher ofgrammar, of ciphering on the abacus and such like, how did he differmuch from the dancing-master or fencing-master, or deserve muchregard?--Such was the rule in the ancient healthy times. 

Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human education; thatthe human creature needs first of all to be educated not that he mayspeak, but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say! Ifspeech is the bank-note of an inward capital of culture, of insight andnoble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shallbe honored. But if there is no inward capital; if speech represent noreal culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, butthe fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas, saidbank-note is then a _forged_ one; passing freely current in the market;but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all theworld, which are in sad truth infallible, and of amount incalculable. Few think of it at present; but the truth remains forever so. Inparliaments and other loud assemblages, your eloquent talk, disunitedfrom Nature and her facts, is taken as wisdom and the correct image ofsaid facts: but Nature well knows what it is, Nature will not have itas such, and will reject your forged note one day, with huge costs. Thefoolish traders in the market pass freely, nothing doubting, and rejoicein the dexterous execution of the piece: and so it circulates from handto hand, and from class to class; gravitating ever downwards towards thepractical class; till at last it reaches some poor _working_ hand, whocan pass it no farther, but must take it to the bank to get bread withit, and there the answer is, "Unhappy caitiff, this note is forged. Itdoes not mean performance and reality, in parliaments and elsewhere, forthy behoof; it means fallacious semblance of performance; and thou, poordupe, art thrown into the stocks on offering it here!"

Alas, alas, looking abroad over Irish difficulties, Mosaicsweating-establishments, French barricades, and an anarchic Europe, isit not as if all the populations of the world were rising or had riseninto incendiary madness;--unable longer to endure such an avalancheof forgeries, and of penalties in consequence, as had accumulated uponthem? The speaker is "excellent;" the notes he does are beautiful?Beautifully fit for the market, yes; _he_ is an excellent artist in hisbusiness;--and the more excellent he is, the more is my desire to layhim by the heels, and fling _him_ into the treadmill, that I might savethe poor sweating tailors, French Sansculottes, and Irish Sanspotatoesfrom bearing the smart!

For the smart must be borne; some one must bear it, as sure as Godlives. Every word of man is either a note or a forged note:--have theseeternal skies forgotten to be in earnest, think you, because men gogrinning like enchanted apes? Foolish souls, this now as of old is theunalterable law of your existence. If you know the truth and do it, the Universe itself seconds you, bears you on to sure victoryeverywhere:--and, observe, to sure defeat everywhere if you do notdo the truth. And alas, if you _know_ only the eloquent fallacioussemblance of the truth, what chance is there of your ever doing it?You will do something very different from it, I think!--He who wellconsiders, will find this same "art of speech, " as we moderns haveit, to be a truly astonishing product of the Ages; and the longer heconsiders it, the more astonishing and alarming. I reckon it the saddestof all the curses that now lie heavy on us. With horror and amazement, one perceives that this much-celebrated "art, " so diligently practisedin all corners of the world just now, is the chief destroyer of whatevergood is born to us (softly, swiftly shutting up all nascent good, as ifunder exhausted glass receivers, there to choke and die); and the grandparent manufactory of evil to us, --as it were, the last finishing andvarnishing workshop of all the Devil's ware that circulates under thesun. No Devil's sham is fit for the market till it have been polishedand enamelled here; this is the general assaying-house for such, wherethe artists examine and answer, "Fit for the market; not fit!" Wordswill not express what mischiefs the misuse of words has done, and isdoing, in these heavy-laden generations. 

Do you want a man _not_ to practise what he believes, then encouragehim to keep often speaking it in words. Every time he speaks it, thetendency to do it will grow less. His empty speech of what he believes, will be a weariness and an affliction to the wise man. But do you wishhis empty speech of what he believes, to become farther an insincerespeech of what he does not believe? Celebrate to him his gift of speech;assure him that he shall rise in Parliament by means of it, and achievegreat things without any performance; that eloquent speech, whetherperformed or not, is admirable. My friends, eloquent unperformed speech, in Parliament or elsewhere, is horrible! The eloquent man that delivers, in Parliament or elsewhere, a beautiful speech, and will perform nothingof it, but leaves it as if already performed, --what can you make of thatman? He has enrolled himself among the _Ignes Fatui_ and Children ofthe Wind; means to serve, as beautifully illuminated Chinese Lantern, in that corps henceforth. I think, the serviceable thing you could doto that man, if permissible, would be a severe one: To clip off a bitof his eloquent tongue by way of penance and warning; another bit, ifhe again spoke without performing; and so again, till you had clipt thewhole tongue away from him, --and were delivered, you and he, from atleast one miserable mockery: "There, eloquent friend, see now in silenceif there be any redeeming deed in thee; of blasphemous wind-eloquence, at least, we shall have no more!" How many pretty men have gone thisroad, escorted by the beautifulest marching music from all the "publicorgans;" and have found at last that it ended--where? It is the _broad_road, that leads direct to Limbo and the Kingdom of the Inane. Giftedmen, and once valiant nations, and as it were the whole world with oneaccord, are marching thither, in melodious triumph, all the drums andhautboys giving out their cheerfulest _Ca-ira_. It is the universalhumor of the world just now. My friends, I am very sure you will_arrive_, unless you halt!--

Considered as the last finish of education, or of human culture, worthand acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and even divine; it islike the kindling of a Heaven's light to show us what a glorious worldexists, and has perfected itself, in a man. But if no world exist in theman; if nothing but continents of empty vapor, of greedy self-conceits, common-place hearsays, and indistinct loomings of a sordid _chaos_exist in him, what will be the use of "light" to show us that? Bettera thousand times that such a man do not speak; but keep his emptyvapor and his sordid chaos to himself, hidden to the utmost from allbeholders. To look on that, can be good for no human beholder; tolook away from that, must be good. And if, by delusive semblances ofrhetoric, logic, first-class degrees, and the aid of elocution-mastersand parliamentary reporters, the poor proprietor of said chaos shouldbe led to persuade himself, and get others persuaded, --which it is thenature of his sad task to do, and which, in certain eras of the world, it is fatally possible to do, --that this is a cosmos which he owns; that_he_, being so perfect in tongue-exercise and full of college-honors, is an "educated" man, and pearl of great price in his generation; thatround him, and his parliament emulously listening to him, as round somedivine apple of gold set in a picture of silver, all the world shouldgather to adore: what is likely to become of him and the gatheringworld? An apple of Sodom set in the clusters of Gomorrah: that, littleas he suspects it, is the definition of the poor chaoticallyeloquent man, with his emulous parliament and miserable adoringworld!--Considered as the whole of education, or human culture, whichit now is in our modern manners; all apprenticeship except to merehandicraft having fallen obsolete, and the "educated man" being with usemphatically and exclusively the man that can speak well with tongueor pen, and astonish men by the quantities of speech he has _heard_("tremendous _reader_, " "walking encyclopaedia, " and such like), --theArt of Speech is probably definable in that case as the short summary ofall the Black Arts put together. 

But the Schoolmaster is secondary, an effect rather than a cause inthis matter: what the Schoolmaster with his universities shall manageor attempt to teach will be ruled by what the Society with its practicalindustries is continually demanding that men should learn. We spoke onceof vital lungs for Society: and in fact this question always rises asthe alpha and omega of social questions, What methods the Society has ofsummoning aloft into the high places, for its help and governance, thewisdom that is born to it in all places, and of course is born chieflyin the more populous or lower places? For this, if you will consider it, expresses the ultimate available result, and net sum-total, of all theefforts, struggles and confused activities that go on in the Society;and determines whether they are true and wise efforts, certain to bevictorious, or false and foolish, certain to be futile, and to fallcaptive and caitiff. How do men rise in your Society? In all Societies, Turkey included, and I suppose Dahomey included, men do rise; but thequestion of questions always is, What kind of men? Men of noble gifts, or men of ignoble? It is the one or the other; and a life-and-deathinquiry which! For in all places and all times, little as you may heedit, Nature most silently but most inexorably demands that it be the oneand not the other. And you need not try to palm an ignoble sham uponher, and call it noble; for she is a judge. And her penalties, as quietas she looks, are terrible: amounting to world-earthquakes, to anarchyand death everlasting; and admit of no appeal!--

Surely England still flatters herself that she has lungs; that she canstill breathe a little? Or is it that the poor creature, driven intomere blind industrialisms; and as it were, gone pearl-diving this longwhile many fathoms deep, and tearing up the oyster-beds so as nevercreature did before, hardly knows, --so busy in the belly of the oysterchaos, where is no thought of "breathing, "--whether she has lungs ornot? Nations of a robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes takein a deal of breath _before_ diving; and live long, in the muddy deeps, without new breath: but they too come to need it at last, and will dieif they cannot get it!

To the gifted soul that is born in England, what is the career, then, that will carry him, amid noble Olympic dust, up to the immortal gods?For his country's sake, that it may not lose the service he was borncapable of doing it; for his own sake, that his life be not choked andperverted, and his light from Heaven be not changed into lightningfrom the Other Place, --it is essential that there be such a career. Thecountry that can offer no career in that case, is a doomed country; nayit is already a dead country: it has secured the ban of Heaven upon it;will not have Heaven's light, will have the Other Place's lightning; andmay consider itself as appointed to expire, in frightful coughings ofstreet musketry or otherwise, on a set day, and to be in the eye of lawdead. In no country is there not some career, inviting to it either thenoble Hero, or the tough Greek of the Lower Empire: which of the two doyour careers invite? There is no question more important. The kind ofcareers you offer in countries still living, determines with perfectexactness the kind of the life that is in them, --whether it is naturalblessed life, or galvanic accursed ditto, and likewise what degree ofstrength is in the same. 

Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is the silent orunlearned career of the Industrialisms, which are very many among us;and there is the articulate or learned career of the three professions, Medicine, Law (under which we may include Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether hecan hold his tongue or cannot? True, all human talent, especially alldeep talent, is a talent to _do_, and is intrinsically of silent nature;inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which itis an incarnated fraction. All real talent, I fancy, would much rather, if it listened only to Nature's monitions, express itself in rhythmicfacts than in melodious words, which latter at best, where they are goodfor anything, are only a feeble echo and shadow or foreshadow of theformer. But talents differ much in this of power to be silent; andcircumstances, of position, opportunity and such like, modify themstill more;--and Nature's monitions, oftenest quite drowned in foreignhearsays, are by no means the only ones listened to in deciding!--TheIndustrialisms are all of silent nature; and some of them are heroicand eminently human; others, again, we may call unheroic, not eminentlyhuman: _beaverish_ rather, but still honest; some are even _vulpine_, altogether inhuman and dishonest. Your born genius must make his choice. 

If a soul is born with divine intelligence, and has its lips touchedwith hallowed fire, in consecration for high enterprises under the sun, this young soul will find the question asked of him by England everyhour and moment: "Canst thou turn thy human intelligence into the beaversort, and make honest contrivance, and accumulation of capital by it? Ifso, do it; and avoid the vulpine kind, which I don't recommend. Honesttriumphs in engineering and machinery await thee; scrip awaitsthee, commercial successes, kingship in the counting-room, on thestock-exchange;--thou shalt be the envy of surrounding flunkies, andcollect into a heap more gold than a dray-horse can draw. "--"Gold, somuch gold?" answers the ingenuous soul, with visions of the envy ofsurrounding flunkies dawning on him; and in very many cases decides thathe will contract himself into beaverism, and with such a horse-draughtof gold, emblem of a never-imagined success in beaver heroism, strikethe surrounding flunkies yellow. 

This is our common course; this is in some sort open to every creature, what we call the beaver career; perhaps more open in England, taking inAmerica too, than it ever was in any country before. And, truly, goodconsequences follow out of it: who can be blind to them? Half of a mostexcellent and opulent result is realized to us in this way; balefulonly when it sets up (as too often now) for being the whole result. Ahalf-result which will be blessed and heavenly so soon as the other halfis had, --namely wisdom to guide the first half. Let us honor all honesthuman power of contrivance in its degree. The beaver intellect, solong as it steadfastly refuses to be vulpine, and answers the tempterpointing out short routes to it with an honest "No, no, " is trulyrespectable to me; and many a highflying speaker and singer whom I haveknown, has appeared to me much less of a developed man than certainof my mill-owning, agricultural, commercial, mechanical, or otherwiseindustrial friends, who have held their peace all their days and gone onin the silent state. If a man can keep his intellect silent, and make iteven into honest beaverism, several very manful moralities, in dangerof wreck on other courses, may comport well with that, and give it agenuine and partly human character; and I will tell him, in these dayshe may do far worse with himself and his intellect than change it intobeaverism, and make honest money with it. If indeed he could become a_heroic_ industrial, and have a life "eminently human"! But that is noteasy at present. Probably some ninety-nine out of every hundred of ourgifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go thisbeaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, isplentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadfully behindhand. 

But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of vivid, impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to give itselfsensible utterance, --I find that, in this case, the field it has inEngland is narrow to an extreme; is perhaps narrower than ever offereditself, for the like object, in this world before. Parliament, Church, Law: let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career, hefinds among variable conditions one condition invariable, and extremelysurprising, That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue. For heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no accountkept:--The English Nation does not need that silent kind, then, but onlythe talking kind? Most astonishing. Of all the organs a man has, thereis none held in account, it would appear, but the tongue he usesfor talking. Premiership, woolsack, mitre, and quasi-crown: all isattainable if you can talk with due ability. Everywhere your proof-shotis to be a well-fired volley of talk. Contrive to talk well, you willget to Heaven, the modern Heaven of the English. Do not talk well, onlywork well, and heroically hold your peace, you have no chance whateverto get thither; with your utmost industry you may get to ThreadneedleStreet, and accumulate more gold than a dray-horse can draw. Is not thisa very wonderful arrangement?

I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks; of humancompetitors, high aspirants, climbing heavenward on the soaped pole;seizing the soaped pig; and clutching with cleft fist, at full gallop, the fated goose tied aloft by its foot;--which feats do prove agility, toughness and other useful faculties in man: but this of dexterous talkis probably as strange a competition as any. And the question rises, Whether certain of these other feats, or perhaps an alternation of allof them, relieved now and then by a bout of grinning through the collar, might not be profitably substituted for the solitary proof-feat of talk, now getting rather monotonous by its long continuance? Alas, Mr. Bull, I do find it is all little other than a proof of toughness, which is aquality I respect, with more or less expenditure of falsity andastucity superadded, which I entirely condemn. Toughness _plus_astucity:--perhaps a simple wooden mast set up in Palace-Yard, wellsoaped and duly presided over, might be the honester method? Such amethod as this by trial of talk, for filling your chief offices inChurch and State, was perhaps never heard of in the solar systembefore. You are quite used to it, my poor friend; and nearly dead by theconsequences of it: but in the other Planets, as in other epochs of yourown Planet it would have done had you proposed it, the thing awakensincredulous amazement, world-wide Olympic laughter, which ends intempestuous hootings, in tears and horror! My friend, if you can, asheretofore this good while, find nobody to take care of your affairsbut the expertest talker, it is all over with your affairs and you. Talknever yet could guide any man's or nation's affairs; nor will it yours, except towards the _Limbus Patrum_, where all talk, except a very selectkind of it, lodges at last. 

Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightfulmedusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the _half_-articulate professions, and does not much invite theardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might bewholly human, and indeed should by all rules be, --the profession of theHuman Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with thehighest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of allpriesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As willappear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiasticspectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's taskis always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily atpresent we find it too become in good part _beaverish_; yielding amoney-result alone. And what of it is not beaverish, --does not that toogo mainly to ingenious talking, publishing of yourself, ingratiatingof yourself; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and alas apartly vulpine ditto;--making the once sacred [Gr. ] _'Iatros_, or HumanHealer, more impossible for us than ever!

Angry basilisks watch at the gates of Law and Church just now; andstrike a sad damp into the nobler of the young aspirants. Hard bondsare offered you to sign; as it were, a solemn engagement to constituteyourself an impostor, before ever entering; to declare your beliefin incredibilities, --your determination, in short, to take Chaos forCosmos, and Satan for the Lord of things, if he come with money in hispockets, and horsehair and bombazine decently wrapt about him. Fatalpreliminaries, which deter many an ingenuous young soul, and send himback from the threshold, and I hope will deter ever more. But if you doenter, the condition is well known: "Talk; who can talk best here? Hisshall be the mouth of gold, and the purse of gold; and with my [Gr. ]_mitra_ (once the head-dress of unfortunate females, I am told) shallhis sacred temples be begirt. "

Ingenuous souls, unless forced to it, do now much shudder at thethreshold of both these careers, and not a few desperately turn backinto the wilderness rather, to front a very rude fortune, and bedevoured by wild beasts as is likeliest. But as to Parliament, again, and its eligibility if attainable, there is yet no question anywhere;the ingenuous soul, if possessed of money-capital enough, is predestinedby the parental and all manner of monitors to that career of talk; andaccepts it with alacrity and clearness of heart, doubtful only whetherhe shall be _able_ to make a speech. Courage, my brave young fellow. Ifyou can climb a soaped pole of any kind, you will certainly be able tomake a speech. All mortals have a tongue; and carry on some jumble, if not of thought, yet of stuff which they could talk. The weakest ofanimals has got a cry in it, and can give voice before dying. If you aretough enough, bent upon it desperately enough, I engage you shall makea speech;--but whether that will be the way to Heaven for you, I do notengage. 

These, then, are our two careers for genius: mute Industrialism, whichcan seldom become very human, but remains beaverish mainly: and thethree Professions named learned, --that is to say, able to talk. For theheroic or higher kinds of human intellect, in the silent state, there isnot the smallest inquiry anywhere; apparently a thing not wanted in thiscountry at present. What the supply may be, I cannot inform M'Croudy;but the market-demand, he may himself see, is _nil_. These are our threeprofessions that require human intellect in part or whole, not able todo with mere beaverish; and such a part does the gift of talk play inone and all of them. Whatsoever is not beaverish seems to go forthin the shape of talk. To such length is human intellect wasted orsuppressed in this world!

If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterredby the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannotaltogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, orsatisfy himself with the prospect of making money, --what becomes ofhim in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and everof more? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notablyenough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of tryingto write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, orsuperiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by eloquent talking, lethim try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here happily, having threefingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to alllengths and in spite of all mortals: in this career there is happilyno public impediment that can turn him back; nothing but privatestarvation--which is itself a _finis_ or kind of goal--can pretend tohinder a British man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, andwringing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee; No talent isin thee. " To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged inhim, this liberty remains; and truly it is, if well computed, almost theonly one he has. 

A crowded portal this of Literature, accordingly! The haven ofexpatriated spiritualisms, and alas also of expatriated vanities andprurient imbecilities: here do the windy aspirations, foiled activities, foolish ambitions, and frustrate human energies reduced to the vocablecondition, fly as to the one refuge left; and the Republic of Lettersincreases in population at a faster rate than even the Republic ofAmerica. The strangest regiment in her Majesty's service, this of theSoldiers of Literature:--would your Lordship much like to march throughCoventry with them? The immortal gods are there (quite irrecognizableunder these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets;--an extremelymiscellaneous regiment. In fact the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of discharged play-actors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad-singers; and marches notas a regiment, but as a boundless canaille, --without drill, uniform, captaincy or billet; with huge over-proportion of drummers; you wouldsay, a regiment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket tobe seen in it, --more a canaille than a regiment. Canaille of all theloud-sounding levities, and general winnowings of Chaos, marchingthrough the world in a most ominous manner; proclaiming, audibly ifyou have ears: "Twelfth hour of the Night; ancient graves yawning; paleclammy Puseyisms screeching in their winding-sheets; owls busy in theCity regions; many goblins abroad! Awake ye living; dream no more; ariseto judgment! Chaos and Gehenna are broken loose; the Devil with hisBedlams must be flung in chains again, and the Last of the Days is aboutto dawn!" Such is Literature to the reflective soul at this moment. 

But what now concerns us most is the circumstance that here too thedemand is, Vocables, still vocables. In all appointed courses ofactivity and paved careers for human genius, and in this unpaved, unappointed, broadest career of Literature, broad way that leadeth todestruction for so many, the one duty laid upon you is still, Talk, talk. Talk well with pen or tongue, and it shall be well with you;do not talk well, it shall be ill with you. To wag the tongue withdexterous acceptability, there is for human worth and faculty, in ourEngland of the Nineteenth Century, that one method of emergence and noother. Silence, you would say, means annihilation for the Englishman ofthe Nineteenth Century. The worth that has not spoken itself, is not;or is potentially only, and as if it were not. Vox is the God of thisUniverse. If you have human intellect, it avails nothing unless youeither make it into beaverism, or talk with it. Make it into beaverism, and gather money; or else make talk with it, and gather what you can. Such is everywhere the demand for talk among us: to which, of course, the supply is proportionate. 

From dinners up to woolsacks and divine mitres, here in England, muchmay be gathered by talk; without talk, of the human sort nothing. IsSociety become wholly a bag of wind, then, ballasted by guineas? Are ourinterests in it as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal?--In Army orNavy, when unhappily we have war on hand, there is, almost against ourwill, some kind of demand for certain of the silent talents. But inpeace, that too passes into mere demand of the ostentations, of thepipeclays and the blank cartridges; and, --except that Naval men areoccasionally, on long voyages, forced to hold their tongue, and conversewith the dumb elements, and illimitable oceans, that moan and rave therewithout you and within you, which is a great advantage to the Navalman, --our poor United Services have to make conversational windbags andostentational paper-lanterns of themselves, or do worse, even as theothers. 

My friends, must I assert, then, what surely all men know, though allmen seem to have forgotten it, That in the learned professions as in theunlearned, and in human things throughout, in every place and in everytime, the true function of intellect is not that of talking, but ofunderstanding and discerning with a view to performing! An intellect mayeasily talk too much, and perform too little. Gradually, if it get intothe noxious habit of talk, there will less and less performance comeof it, talk being so delightfully handy in comparison with work; andat last there will no work, or thought of work, be got from it atall. Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almostnothing;--sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; andbecomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the generalsummary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the cursesthe Posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world! Would youdiscover the Atropos of Human Virtue; the sure Destroyer, "by painlessextinction, " of Human Veracities, Performances, and Capabilities toperform or to be veracious, --it is this, you have it here. 

Unwise talk is matchless in unwisdom. Unwise work, if it but persist, iseverywhere struggling towards correction, and restoration to health;for it is still in contact with Nature, and all Nature incessantlycontradicts it, and will heal it or annihilate it: not so with unwisetalk, which addresses itself, regardless of veridical Nature, to theuniversal suffrages; and can if it be dexterous, find harbor theretill all the suffrages are bankrupt and gone to Houndsditch, Nature notinterfering with her protest till then. False speech, definable as theacme of unwise speech, is capable, as we already said, of becoming thefalsest of all things. Falsest of all things:--and whither will thegeneral deluge of that, in Parliament and Synagogue, in Book andBroadside, carry you and your affairs, my friend, when once they areembarked on it as now?

Parliament, _Parliamentum_, is by express appointment the TalkingApparatus; yet not in Parliament either is the essential function, byany means, talk. Not to speak your opinion well, but to have a good andjust opinion worth speaking, --for every Parliament, as for every man, this latter is the point. Contrive to have a true opinion, you will getit told in some way, better or worse; and it will be a blessing to allcreatures. Have a false opinion, and tell it with the tongue of Angels, what can that profit? The better you tell it, the worse it will be!

In Parliament and out of Parliament, and everywhere in this Universe, your one salvation is, That you can discern with just insight, andfollow with noble valor, what the law of the case before you is, whatthe appointment of the Maker in regard to it has been. Get this outof one man, you are saved; fail to get this out of the most AugustParliament wrapt in the sheepskins of a thousand years, you arelost, --your Parliament, and you, and all your sheepskins are lost. Beautiful talk is by no means the most pressing want in Parliament! Wehave had some reasonable modicum of talk in Parliament! What talk hasdone for us in Parliament, and is now doing, the dullest of us at lengthbegins to see!

Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to business; of thetraining an Official Man gets in this school of argument and talk. He ishere inured to patience, tolerance; sees what is what in the Nation andin the Nation's Government attains official knowledge, officialcourtesy and manners--in short, is polished at all points into officialarticulation, and here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to bea Governor of men. So it is said. --Doubtless, I think, he will see andsuffer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things;--hewill, with what eyes he has, gradually _see_ Parliament itself, for onething; what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, ever-babbling yetinarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly one of the strangestunder the sun just now): which doubtless, if he have in view to getmeasures voted there one day, will be an important acquisition for him. But as to breeding himself for a Doer of Work, much more for a King, orChief of Doers, here in this element of talk; as to that I confessthe fatalest doubts, or rather, alas, I have no doubt! Alas, it isour fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgentlyrequiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be aStatesman, or Chief of _Workers_, till he has first proved himselfa Chief of _Talkers_: which mode of trial for a Worker, is it notprecisely, of all the trials you could set him upon, the falsest andunfairest?

Nay, I doubt much you are not likely ever to meet the fittest materialfor a Statesman, or Chief of Workers, in such an element as that. YourPotential Chief of Workers, will he come there at all, to try whether hecan talk? Your poor tenpound franchisers and electoral world generally, in love with eloquent talk, are they the likeliest to discern what manit is that has worlds of silent work in him? No. Or is such a man, evenif born in the due rank for it, the likeliest to present himself, andcourt their most sweet voices? Again, no. 

The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment forinarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. Nobody, orhardly anybody, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how cananybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of anykind; a Human _Doer_ especially, who is the most complex, profound, andinarticulate of all Nature's Facts? Nobody can recognize him: till oncehe is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has beenarticulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To the worshipper oftalk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct fromHeaven, --how shall any excellence of man become recognizable tothis unfortunate? Not except by announcing and placarding itself asexcellent, --which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be inno great haste to do. 

Wisdom, the divine message which every soul of man brings into thisworld; the divine prophecy of what the new man has got the new andpeculiar capability to do, is intrinsically of silent nature. It cannotat once, or completely at all, be read off in words; for it is writtenin abstruse facts, of endowment, position, desire, opportunity, grantedto the man;--interprets itself in presentiments, vague struggles, passionate endeavors and is only legible in whole when his work is_done_. Not by the noble monitions of Nature, but by the ignoble, is aman much tempted to publish the secret of his soul in words. Words, ifhe have a secret, will be forever inadequate to it. Words do but disturbthe real answer of fact which could be given to it; disturb, obstruct, and will in the end abolish, and render impossible, said answer. Nogrand Doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings. William the Silent spoke himself best in a country liberated; OliverCromwell did not shine in rhetoric; Goethe, when he had but a book inview, found that he must say nothing even of that, if it was to succeedwith him. 

Then as to politeness, and breeding to business. An official man must bebred to business; of course he must: and not for essence only, but evenfor the manners of office he requires breeding. Besides his intrinsicfaculty, whatever that may be, he must be cautious, vigilant, discreet, --above all things, he must be reticent, patient, polite. Certain of these qualities are by nature imposed upon men of station;and they are trained from birth to some exercise of them: thisconstitutes their one intrinsic qualification for office;--this is theirone advantage in the New Downing Street projected for this New Era; andit will not go for much in that Institution. One advantage, or temporaryadvantage; against which there are so many counterbalances. It is theindispensable preliminary for office, but by no means the completeoutfit, --a miserable outfit where there is nothing farther. 

Will your Lordship give me leave to say that, practically, the intrinsicqualities will presuppose these preliminaries too, but by no means _viceversa_. That, on the whole, if you have got the intrinsic qualities, youhave got everything, and the preliminaries will prove attainable; butthat if you have got only the preliminaries, you have yet got nothing. A man of real dignity will not find it impossible to bear himself in adignified manner; a man of real understanding and insight will getto know, as the fruit of his very first study, what the laws of hissituation are, and will conform to these. Rough old Samuel Johnson, blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often was, definedhimself, justly withal, as a polite man: a noble manful attitude of soulis his; a clear, true and loyal sense of what others are, and what hehimself is, shines through the rugged coating of him; comes out asgrave deep rhythmus when his King honors him, and he will not "bandycompliments with his King;"--is traceable too in his indignant tramplingdown of the Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made insolences, andcontradictions of sinners; which may be called his _revolutionary_movements, hard and peremptory by the law of them; these could not besoft like his _constitutional_ ones, when men and kings took him forsomewhat like the thing he was. Given a noble man, I think your Lordshipmay expect by and by a polite man. No "politer" man was to be found inBritain than the rustic Robert Burns: high duchesses were captivatedwith the chivalrous ways of the man; recognized that here was the truechivalry, and divine nobleness of bearing, --as indeed they well might, now when the Peasant God and Norse Thor had come down among them again!Chivalry this, if not as they do chivalry in Drury Lane or West-Enddrawing-rooms, yet as they do it in Valhalla and the General Assembly ofthe Gods. 

For indeed, who _invented_ chivalry, politeness, or anything that isnoble and melodious and beautiful among us, except precisely the likeof Johnson and of Burns? The select few who in the generations ofthis world were wise and valiant, they, in spite of all the tremendousmajority of blockheads and slothful belly-worshippers, and noisy uglypersons, have devised whatsoever is noble in the manners of man to man. I expect they will learn to be polite, your Lordship, when you give thema chance!--Nor is it as a school of human culture, for this or forany other grace or gift, that Parliament will be found first-rateor indispensable. As experience in the river is indispensable to theferryman, so is knowledge of his Parliament to the British Peel orChatham;--so was knowledge of the OEil-de-Boeuf to the French Choiseul. Where and how said river, whether Parliament with Wilkeses, orOEil-de-Boeuf with Pompadours, can be waded, boated, swum; how themiscellaneous cargoes, "measures" so called, can be got across it, according to their kinds, and landed alive on the hither side asfacts:--we have all of us our _ferries_ in this world; and must know theriver and its ways, or get drowned some day! In that sense, practicein Parliament is indispensable to the British Statesman; but not in anyother sense. 

A school, too, of manners and of several other things, the Parliamentwill doubtless be to the aspirant Statesman; a school better orworse;--as the OEil-de-Boeuf likewise was, and as all scenes where menwork or live are sure to be. Especially where many men work together, the very rubbing against one another will grind and polish off theirangularities into roundness, into "politeness" after a sort; and theofficial man, place him how you may, will never want for schooling, of extremely various kinds. A first-rate school one cannot call thisParliament for him;--I fear to say what rate at present! In so far as itteaches him vigilance, patience, courage, toughness of lungs or of soul, and skill in any kind of swimming, it is a good school. In so far as itforces him to speak where Nature orders silence; and even, lest all theworld should learn his secret (which often enough would kill his secret, and little profit the world), forces him to speak falsities, vagueambiguities, and the froth-dialect usual in Parliaments in these times, it may be considered one of the worst schools ever devised by man; and, I think, may almost challenge the OEil-de-Boeuf to match it in badness. 

Parliament will train your men to the manners required of a statesman;but in a much less degree to the intrinsic functions of one. To theselatter, it is capable of mistraining as nothing else can. Parliamentwill train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk. To tell a good story for yourself, and to make it _appear_ that you have done your work: this, especiallyin constitutional countries, is something;--and yet in all countries, constitutional ones too, it is intrinsically nothing, probably evenless. For it is not the function of any mortal, in Downing Street orelsewhere here below, to wag the tongue of him, and make it appear thathe has done work; but to wag some quite other organs of him, and todo work; there is no danger of his work's appearing by and by. Such anaccomplishment, even in constitutional countries, I grieve to say, maybecome much less than nothing. Have you at all computed how much less?The human creature who has once given way to satisfying himself with"appearances, " to seeking his salvation in "appearances, " the moral lifeof such human creature is rapidly bleeding out of him. Depend upon it, Beelzebub, Satan, or however you may name the too authentic Genius ofEternal Death, has got that human creature in his claws. By and by youwill have a dead parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled awaywithout return!

Such parliamentary bagpipes I myself have heard play tunes, much to thesatisfaction of the people. Every tune lies within their compass; andtheir mind (for they still call it _mind_) is ready as a hurdy-gurdyon turning of the handle: "My Lords, this question now before theHouse"--Ye Heavens, O ye divine Silences, was there in the womb ofChaos, then, such a product, liable to be evoked by human art, as thatsame? While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the FourthEstate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips witha staff dipped in honey, --I have sat with reflections too ghastly tobe uttered. A poor human creature and learned friend, once possessed ofmany fine gifts, possessed of intellect, veracity, and manful convictionon a variety of objects, has he now lost all that;--converted all thatinto a glistering phosphorescence which can show itself on the outside;while within, all is dead, chaotic, dark; a painted sepulchre full ofdead-men's bones! Discernment, knowledge, intellect, in the human senseof the words, this man has now none. His opinion you do not ask on anymatter: on the _matter_ he has no opinion, judgment, or insight; onlyon what may be said about the matter, how it may be argued of, what tunemay be played upon it to enlighten the eyes of the Fourth Estate. 

Such a soul, though to the eye he still keeps tumbling about in theParliamentary element, and makes "motions, " and passes bills, for aughtI know, --are we to define him as a _living_ one, or as a dead? Partridgethe Almanac-Maker, whose "Publications" still regularly appear, is knownto be dead! The dog that was drowned last summer, and that floats up anddown the Thames with ebb and flood ever since, --is it not dead? Alas, in the hot months, you meet here and there such a floating dog; and atlength, if you often use the river steamers, get to know him by sight. "There he is again, still astir there in his quasi-stygian element!"you dejectedly exclaim (perhaps reading your Morning Newspaper at themoment); and reflect, with a painful oppression of nose and imagination, on certain completed professors of parliamentary eloquence in moderntimes. Dead long since, but _not_ resting; daily doing motions in thatWestminster region still, --daily from Vauxhall to Blackfriars, andback again; and cannot get away at all! Daily (from Newspaper or riversteamer) you may see him at some point of his fated course, hovering inthe eddies, stranded in the ooze, or rapidly progressing with flood orebb; and daily the odor of him is getting more intolerable: daily thecondition of him appeals more tragically to gods and men. 

Nature admits no lie; most men profess to be aware of this, but few inany measure lay it to heart. Except in the departments of mere materialmanipulation, it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truthwere merely a polite flourish of rhetoric. What is a lie? The questionis worth asking, once and away, by the practical English mind. 

A voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands, as it hasoccurred and will proceed to develop itself: this clearly, if adopted byany man, will so far forth mislead him in all practical dealing withthe fact; till he cast that statement out of him, and reject it as anunclean poisonous thing, he can have no success in dealing with thefact. If such spoken divergence from the truth be involuntary, we lamentit as a misfortune; and are entitled, at least the speaker of it is, to lament it extremely as the most palpable of all misfortunes, as theindubitablest losing of his way, and turning aside from the goal insteadof pressing towards it, in the race set before him. If the divergence isvoluntary, --there superadds itself to our sorrow a just indignation: wecall the voluntary spoken divergence a lie, and justly abhor it as theessence of human treason and baseness, the desertion of a man to theEnemy of men against himself and his brethren. A lost deserter; who hasgone over to the Enemy, called Satan; and cannot _but_ be lost in theadventure! Such is every liar with the tongue; and such in all nationsis he, at all epochs, considered. Men pull his nose, and kick him outof doors; and by peremptory expressive methods signify that they can andwill have no trade with him. Such is spoken divergence from the fact; sofares it with the practiser of that sad art. 

But have we well considered a divergence _in thought_ from what is thefact? Have we considered the man whose very thought is a lie to him andto us! He too is a frightful man; repeating about this Universe on everyhand what is not, and driven to repeat it; the sure herald of ruin toall that follow him, that know with _his_ knowledge! And would you learnhow to get a mendacious thought, there is no surer recipe than carryinga loose tongue. The lying thought, you already either have it, or willsoon get it by that method. He who lies with his very tongue, _he_clearly enough has long ceased to think truly in his mind. Does he, inany sense, "think"? All his thoughts and imaginations, if theyextend beyond mere beaverisms, astucities and sensualisms, are false, incomplete, perverse, untrue even to himself. He has become a falsemirror of this Universe; not a small mirror only, but a crooked, bedimmed and utterly deranged one. But all loose tongues too are akinto lying ones; are insincere at the best, and go rattling with littlemeaning; the thought lying languid at a great distance behind them, ifthought there be behind them at all. Gradually there will be none orlittle! How can the thought of such a man, what he calls thought, beother than false?

Alas, the palpable liar with his tongue does at least know that he islying, and has or might have some faint vestige of remorse and chanceof amendment; but the impalpable liar, whose tongue articulates mereaccepted commonplaces, cants and babblement, which means only, "Admireme, call me an excellent stump-orator!"--of him what hope is there?His thought, what thought he had, lies dormant, inspired only to inventvocables and plausibilities; while the tongue goes so glib, the thoughtis absent, gone a wool-gathering; getting itself drugged with theapplausive "Hear, hear!"--what will become of such a man? His idlethought has run all to seed, and grown false and the giver of falsities;the inner light of his mind is gone out; all his light is mere putridityand phosphorescence henceforth. Whosoever is in quest of ruin, let himwith assurance follow that man; he or no one is on the right road to it. 

Good Heavens, from the wisest Thought of a man to the actual truth ofa Thing as it lies in Nature, there is, one would suppose, a sufficientinterval! Consider it, --and what other intervals we introduce! Thefaithfulest, most glowing word of a man is but an imperfect image of thethought, such as it is, that dwells within him; his best word will neverbut with error convey his thought to other minds: and then between hispoor thought and Nature's Fact, which is the Thought of the Eternal, there may be supposed to lie some discrepancies, some shortcomings!Speak your sincerest, think your wisest, there is still a great gulfbetween you and the fact. And now, do not speak your sincerest, and whatwill inevitably follow out of that, do not think your wisest, but thinkonly your plausiblest, your showiest for parliamentary purposes, wherewill you land with that guidance?--I invite the British Parliament, andall the Parliamentary and other Electors of Great Britain, to reflecton this till they have well understood it; and then to ask, each ofhimself, What probably the horoscopes of the British Parliament, at thisepoch of World-History, may be?--

Fail, by any sin or any misfortune, to discover what the truth of thefact is, you are lost so far as that fact goes! If your thought do notimage truly but do image falsely the fact, you will vainly try to workupon the fact. The fact will not obey you, the fact will silently resistyou; and ever, with silent invincibility, will go on resisting you, till you do get to image it truly instead of falsely. No help for youwhatever, except in attaining to a true image of the fact. Needless tovote a false image true; vote it, revote it by overwhelming majorities, by jubilant unanimities and universalities; read it thrice or threehundred times, pass acts of parliament upon it till the Statute-book canhold no more, --it helps not a whit: the thing is not so, the thing isotherwise than so; and Adam's whole Posterity, voting daily on it tillthe world finish, will not alter it a jot. Can the sublimest sanhedrim, constitutional parliament, or other Collective Wisdom of the world, persuade fire not to burn, sulphuric acid to be sweet milk, or the Moonto become green cheese? The fact is much the reverse:--and even theConstitutional British Parliament abstains from such arduous attemptsas these latter in the voting line; and leaves the multiplication-table, the chemical, mechanical and other qualities of material substancesto take their own course; being aware that voting and perorating, andreporting in Hansard, will not in the least alter any of these. Which isindisputably wise of the British Parliament. 

Unfortunately the British Parliament does not, at present, quite knowthat all manner of things and relations of things, spiritual equallywith material, all manner of qualities, entities, existences whatsoever, in this strange visible and invisible Universe, are equally inflexibleof nature; that, they will, one and all, with precisely the sameobstinacy, continue to obey their own law, not our law; deaf as theadder to all charm of parliamentary eloquence, and of voting never sooften repeated; silently, but inflexibly and forevermore, declining tochange themselves, even as sulphuric acid declines to become sweet milk, though you vote so to the end of the world. This, it sometimes seemsto me, is not quite sufficiently laid hold of by the British and otherParliaments just at present. Which surely is a great misfortune tosaid Parliaments! For, it would appear, the grand point, after allconstitutional improvements, and such wagging of wigs in Westminster asthere has been, is precisely what it was before any constitution was yetheard of, or the first official wig had budded out of nothing: namely, to ascertain what the truth of your question, in Nature, really is!Verily so. In this time and place, as in all past and in all futuretimes and places. To-day in St. Stephen's, where constitutional, philanthropical, and other great things lie in the mortar-kit; even ason the Plain of Shinar long ago, where a certain Tower, likewise of avery philanthropic nature, indeed one of the desirablest towers I everheard of, was to be built, --but couldn't! My friends, I do not laugh;truly I am more inclined to weep. 

Get, by six hundred and fifty-eight votes, or by no vote at all, bythe silent intimation of your own eyesight and understanding given youdirect out of Heaven, and more sacred to you than anything earthly, andthan all things earthly, --a correct image of the fact in question, asGod and Nature have made it: that is the one thing needful; with that itshall be well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact. Get, by the sublimest constitutional methods, belauded by all the world, anincorrect image of the fact: so shall it be other than well with you; soshall you have laud from able editors and vociferous masses of mistakenhuman creatures; and from the Nature's Fact, continuing quite silentlythe same as it was, contradiction, and that only. What else? Will Naturechange, or sulphuric acid become sweet milk, for the noise of vociferousblockheads? Surely not. Nature, I assure you, has not the smallestintention of doing so. 

On the contrary, Nature keeps silently a most exact Savings-bank, and official register correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor andCreditor, in respect to one and all of us; silently marks down, Creditorby such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism; Debtor to sucha loud blustery blunder, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence ofthat, --Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (forthis is Fate that is writing); and at the end of the account youwill have it all to pay, my friend; there is the rub! Not theinfinitesimalest fraction of a farthing but will be found marked there, for you and against you; and with the due rate of interest you will haveto pay it, neatly, completely, as sure as you are alive. You will haveto pay it even in money if you live:--and, poor slave, do you thinkthere is no payment but in money? There is a payment which Naturerigorously exacts of men, and also of Nations, and this I think whenher wrath is sternest, in the shape of dooming you to possess money. Topossess it; to have your bloated vanities fostered into monstrosityby it, your foul passions blown into explosion by it, your heart andperhaps your very stomach ruined with intoxication by it; your poor lifeand all its manful activities stunned into frenzy and comatose sleep byit, --in one word, as the old Prophets said, your soul forever lost byit. Your soul; so that, through the Eternities, you shall have nosoul, or manful trace of ever having had a soul; but only, for certainfleeting moments, shall have had a money-bag, and have given soul andheart and (frightfuler still) stomach itself in fatal exchange forthe same. You wretched mortal, stumbling about in a God's Temple, andthinking it a brutal Cookery-shop! Nature, when her scorn of a slave isdivinest, and blazes like the blinding lightning against his slavehood, often enough flings him a bag of money, silently saying: "That! Away;thy doom is that!"--

For no man, and for no body or biggest multitude of men, has Naturefavor, if they part company with her facts and her. Excellentstump-orator; eloquent parliamentary dead-dog, making motions, passingbills; reported in the Morning Newspapers, and reputed the "best speakergoing"? From the Universe of Fact he has turned himself away; he is goneinto partnership with the Universe of Phantasm; finds it profitablestto deal in forged notes, while the foolish shopkeepers will acceptthem. Nature for such a man, and for Nations that follow such, has herpatibulary forks, and prisons of death everlasting:--dost thou doubtit? Unhappy mortal, Nature otherwise were herself a Chaos and no Cosmos. Nature was not made by an Impostor; not she, I think, rife as theyare!--In fact, by money or otherwise, to the uttermost fraction of acalculable and incalculable value, we have, each one of us, to settlethe exact balance in the above-said Savings-bank, or official registerkept by Nature: Creditor by the quantity of veracities we have done, Debtor by the quantity of falsities and errors; there is not, by anyconceivable device, the faintest hope of escape from that issue for oneof us, nor for all of us. 

This used to be a well-known fact; and daily still, in certain edifices, steeple-houses, joss-houses, temples sacred or other, everywhere spreadover the world, we hear some dim mumblement of an assertion that such isstill, what it was always and will forever be, the fact: but meseemsit has terribly fallen out of memory nevertheless; and, from Dan toBeersheba, one in vain looks out for a man that really in his heartbelieves it. In his heart he believes, as we perceive, that scrip willyield dividends: but that Heaven too has an office of account, andunerringly marks down, against us or for us, whatsoever thing we door say or think, and treasures up the same in regard to everycreature, --this I do not so well perceive that he believes. Poorblockhead, no: he reckons that all payment is in money, or approximatelyrepresentable by money; finds money go a strange course; disbelieves theparson and his Day of Judgment; discerns not that there is any judgmentexcept in the small or big debt court; and lives (for the present) onthat strange footing in this Universe. The unhappy mortal, what isthe use of his "civilizations" and his "useful knowledges, " if he haveforgotten that beginning of human knowledge; the earliest perceptionof the awakened human soul in this world; the first dictate of Heaven'sinspiration to all men? I cannot account him a man any more; but onlya kind of human beaver, who has acquired the art of ciphering. He liveswithout rushing hourly towards suicide, because his soul, with allits noble aspirations and imaginations, is sunk at the bottom of hisstomach, and lies torpid there, unaspiring, unimagining, unconsidering, as if it were the vital principle of a mere _four_-footed beaver. A soulof a man, appointed for spinning cotton and making money, or, alas, for merely shooting grouse and gathering rent; to whom Eternity andImmortality, and all human Noblenesses and divine Facts that did nottell upon the stock-exchange, were meaningless fables, empty as theinarticulate wind. He will recover out of that persuasion one day, or beground to powder, I believe!--

To such a pass, by our beaverisms and our mammonisms; by canting of"prevenient grace" everywhere, and so boarding and lodging our poorsouls upon supervenient moonshine everywhere, for centuries long; by oursordid stupidities and our idle babblings; through faith in the divineStump-orator, and Constitutional Palaver, or august Sanhedrim ofOrators, --have men and Nations been reduced, in this sad epoch! Icannot call them happy Nations; I must call them Nations like to perish;Nations that will either begin to recover, or else soon die. Recovery isto be hoped;--yes, since there is in Nature an Almighty Beneficence, andHis voice, divinely terrible, can be heard in the world-whirlwind now, even as from of old and forevermore. Recovery, or else destruction andannihilation, is very certain; and the crisis, too, comes rapidly on:but by Stump-Orator and Constitutional Palaver, however perfected, myhopes of _recovery_ have long vanished. Not by them, I should imagine, but by something far the reverse of them, shall we return to truth andGod!--

I tell you, the ignoble intellect cannot think the _truth_, evenwithin its own limits, and when it seriously tries! And of the ignobleintellect that does not seriously try, and has even reached the"ignobleness" of seriously trying the reverse, and of lying with itsvery tongue, what are we to expect? It is frightful to consider. Sincerewise speech is but an imperfect corollary, and insignificant outermanifestation, of sincere wise thought. He whose very tongue uttersfalsities, what has his heart long been doing? The thought of his heartis not its wisest, not even _its_ wisest; it is its foolishest;--andeven of that we have a false and foolish copy. And it is Nature's Fact, or the Thought of the Eternal, which we want to arrive at in regardto the matter, --which if we do _not_ arrive at, we shall not save thematter, we shall drive the matter into shipwreck!

The practice of modern Parliaments, with reporters sitting among them, and twenty-seven millions mostly fools listening to them, fills me withamazement. In regard to no _thing_, or fact as God and Nature have madeit, can you get so much as the real thought of any honorable head, --evenso far as _it_, the said honorable head, still has capacity of thought. What the honorable gentleman's wisest thought is or would have been, had he led from birth a life of piety and earnest veracity and heroicvirtue, you, and he himself poor deep-sunk creature, vainly conjectureas from immense dim distances far in the rear of what he is led to_say_. And again, far in the rear of what his thought is, --surely longinfinitudes beyond all _he_ could ever think, --lies the Thought of GodAlmighty, the Image itself of the Fact, the thing you are in quest of, and must find or do worse! Even his, the honorable gentleman's, actualbewildered, falsified, vague surmise or quasi-thought, even this is notgiven you; but only some falsified copy of this, such as he fancies maysuit the reporters and twenty-seven millions mostly fools. And upon thatlatter you are to act;--with what success, do you expect? That is thethought you are to take for the Thought of the Eternal Mind, --thatdouble-distilled falsity of a blockheadism from one who is false even asa blockhead!

Do I make myself plain to Mr. Peter's understanding? Perhaps it willsurprise him less that parliamentary eloquence excites more wonder thanadmiration in me; that the fate of countries governed by that sublimealchemy does not appear the hopefulest just now. Not by that method, Ishould apprehend, will the Heavens be scaled and the Earth vanquished;not by that, but by another. 

A benevolent man once proposed to me, but without pointing out themethods how, this plan of reform for our benighted world: To cut fromone generation, whether the current one or the next, all the tonguesaway, prohibiting Literature too; and appoint at least one generation topass its life in silence. "There, thou one blessed generation, from thevain jargon of babble thou art beneficently freed. Whatsoever of truth, traditionary or original, thy own god-given intellect shall point out tothee as true, that thou wilt go and do. In doing of it there will be averdict for thee; if a verdict of True, thou wilt hold by it, and everagain do it; if of Untrue, thou wilt never try it more, but be eternallydelivered from it. To do aught because the vain hearsays order thee, andthe big clamors of the sanhedrim of fools, is not thy lot, --what worldsof misery are spared thee! Nature's voice heard in thy own inner being, and the sacred Commandment of thy Maker: these shall be thy guidances, thou happy tongueless generation. What is good and beautiful thou shaltknow; not merely what is said to be so. Not to talk of thy doings, andbecome the envy of surrounding flunkies, but to taste of the fruit ofthy doings themselves, is thine. What the Eternal Laws will sanction forthee, do; what the Froth Gospels and multitudinous long-eared Hearsaysnever so loudly bid, all this is already chaff for thee, --driftingrapidly along, thou knowest whitherward, on the eternal winds. "

Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the chaff might bewinnowed out of every man, and out of all human things; and ninety-ninehundredths of our whole big Universe, spiritual and practical, mightblow itself away, as mere torrents of chaff whole trade-winds of chaff, many miles deep, rushing continually with the voice of whirlwindstowards a certain FIRE, which knows how to deal with it! Ninety-ninehundredths blown away; all the lies blown away, and some skeleton of aspiritual and practical Universe left standing for us which were true:O Heavens, is it forever impossible, then? By a generation that hadno tongue it really might be done; but not so easily by one that had. Tongues, platforms, parliaments, and fourth-estates; unfettered presses, periodical and stationary literatures: we are nearly all gone to tongue, I think; and our fate is very questionable. 

Truly, it is little known at present, and ought forthwith to becomebetter known, what ruin to all nobleness and fruitfulness andblessedness in the genius of a poor mortal you generally bring about, byordering him to speak, to do all things with a view to their being seen!Few good and fruitful things ever were done, or could be done, on thoseterms. Silence, silence; and be distant ye profane, with yourjargonings and superficial babblements, when a man has anything to do!Eye-service, --dost thou know what that is, poor England?--eye-serviceis all the man can do in these sad circumstances; grows to be all he hasthe idea of doing, of his or any other man's ever doing, or ever havingdone, in any circumstances. Sad, enough. Alas, it is our saddest woe ofall;--too sad for being spoken of at present, while all or nearly allmen consider it an imaginary sorrow on my part!

Let the young English soul, in whatever logic-shop and nonsense-verseestablishment of an Eton, Oxford, Edinburgh, Halle, Salamanca, or otherHigh Finishing-School, he may be getting his young idea taught how tospeak and spout, and print sermons and review-articles, and thereby showhimself and fond patrons that it _is_ an idea, --lay this solemnly toheart; this is my deepest counsel to him! The idea you have once spoken, if it even were an idea, is no longer yours; it is gone from you, somuch life and virtue is gone, and the vital circulations of your selfand your destiny and activity are henceforth deprived of it. If youcould not get it spoken, if you could still constrain it into silence, so much the richer are you. Better keep your idea while you can: letit still circulate in your blood, and there fructify; inarticulatelyinciting you to good activities; giving to your whole spiritual life aruddier health. When the time does come for speaking it, you will speakit all the more concisely, the more expressively, appropriately; andif such a time should never come, have you not already acted it, anduttered it as no words can? Think of this, my young friend; for there isnothing truer, nothing more forgotten in these shabby gold-laced days. Incontinence is half of all the sins of man. And among the many kinds ofthat base vice, I know none baser, or at present half so fell and fatal, as that same Incontinence of Tongue. "Public speaking, " "parliamentaryeloquence:" it is a Moloch, before whom young souls are made to passthrough the fire. They enter, weeping or rejoicing, fond parentsconsecrating them to the red-hot Idol, as to the Highest God: and theycome out spiritually _dead_. Dead enough; to live thenceforth a galvaniclife of mere Stump-Oratory; screeching and gibbering, words withoutwisdom, without veracity, without conviction more than skin-deep. Adivine gift, that? It is a thing admired by the vulgar, and rewardedwith seats in the Cabinet and other preciosities; but to the wise, it isa thing not admirable, not adorable; unmelodious rather, and ghastly andbodeful, as the speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight!

Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British man, thou that artnow growing to be something: not a Stump-Orator, if thou canst helpit. Appeal not to the vulgar, with its long ears and its seats in theCabinet; not by spoken words to the vulgar; _hate_ the profane vulgar, and bid it begone. Appeal by silent work, by silent suffering if therebe no work, to the gods, who have nobler than seats in the Cabinet forthee! Talent for Literature, thou hast such a talent? Believe it not, beslow to believe it! To speak, or to write, Nature did not peremptorilyorder thee; but to work she did. And know this: there never was a talenteven for real Literature, not to speak of talents lost and damnedin doing sham Literature, but was primarily a talent for somethinginfinitely better of the silent kind. Of Literature, in all ways, beshy rather than otherwise, at present! There where thou art, work, work;whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it, --with the hand of a man, notof a phantasm; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and exceeding greatreward. Thy words, let them be few, and well-ordered. Love silencerather than speech in these tragic days, when, for very speaking, thevoice of man has fallen inarticulate to man; and hearts, in this loudbabbling, sit dark and dumb towards one another. Witty, --above all, ohbe not witty: none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties; to bewise and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties!

Brave young friend, dear to me, and _known_ too in a sense, though neverseen, nor to be seen by me, --you are, what I am not, in the happy caseto learn to _be_ something and to _do_ something, instead of eloquentlytalking about what has been and was done and may be! The old are whatthey are, and will not alter; our hope is in you. England's hope, andthe world's, is that there may once more be millions such, insteadof units as now. _Macte; i fausto pede_. And may future generations, acquainted again with the silences, and once more cognizant of what isnoble and faithful and divine, look back on us with pity and incredulousastonishment!

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