'Debtor to so much lying:forfeiture of existing stock of worth to such extent;--approach to general damnation by so much.'Till ,as we look round us over a convulsed anarchic Europe,and at home over an anarchy yet convulsed,but only heaving towards convulsion,and to judge by the Mosaic sweating-establishments,cannibal Connaughts and other symptoms,far from convulsion ,we seem to have pretty much exhausted our accumulated stock of worth;and unless money's 'worth'and bullion at the Bank will save us,to be rubbing very close upon that ulterior bourn which I do like to name again!
"On behalf of nearly twenty-seven millions of my fellow-countrymen,sunk deep in Lethean sleep,with mere owl-dreams of Political Ecoy and mice-catching,in this pacific thrice-infernal slush-element;and also of certain select thousands,and hundreds and units,awakened or beginning to awaken from it,and with horror in their hearts perceiving where they are,I beg to protest,and in the name of God to say,with poor 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 Nations that,in angry perversity or brutal torpor and owlish blindness,neglect the eternal message of the gods,and vote for the Worse while the Better is there.Like owls they say,'Barabbas will do;any orthodox Hebrew of the Hebrews,and peaceable believer in M'Croudy and the Faith of Leave-alone will do:the Right Hoable Minimus is well egh;he shall be our Maximus,under him it will be handy to catch mice,and Owldom shall continue a flourishing empire.'"One thing is undeniable,and must be continually repeated till it get to be understood again:Of all constitutions,forms of government,and political methods among men,the question to be asked is even this,What kind of man do you set over us?All questions are answered in the answer to this.Aher thing is worth attending to:people or populace,with never such ballot-boxes,can select such man for you;only the man of worth can recognize worth in men;--to the commonplace man of or of little worth,you,unless you wish to be mis led,need apply on such an occasion.Those poor Tenpound Franchisers of yours,they are even in earnest;the poor sniffing sniggering Hoable Gentlemen they send to Parliament are as little so.
Tenpound Franchisers full of mere beer and balderdash;Hoable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to an Almack's series of evening parties,or big cockmain (battle of all the cocks)very amusing to witness and bet upon:what can or could men in that predicament ever do for you?Nay,if they were in life-and-death earnest,what could it avail you in such a case?I tell you,a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius,or le sense,will make hing but sense out of him and his qualities,and his virtues and defects,if they look till the end of time.He understands them,sees what they are;but that they should understand 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 loyally say,"We do quite understand thee;we perceive thee to be ler and wiser and bigger than we,and will loyally follow thee."The question therefore arises,Whether,since reform of parliament and such like have done so little in that respect,the problem might be with some hope attacked in the direct manner?Suppose all our Institutions,and Public Methods of Procedure,to continue for the present as they are;and suppose farther a Reform Premier,and the English Nation once awakening under him to a due sense of the infinite importance,nay the vital necessity there is of getting able and abler men:--might some heroic wisdom,and actual "ability"to do what must be done,prove discoverable to said Premier;and so the indispensable Heaven's-blessing descend to us from above ,since e has yet sprung from below?From above we shall have to try it;the other is exhausted,--a hopeless method that!The utmost passion of the house-inmates,igant of masonry and architecture,can avail to cure the house of smoke:if they vote and agitate forever,and bestir themselves to the length even of street-barricades,will the smoke in the least abate:how can it?Their passion exercised in such ways,till Doomsday,will avail them hing.Let their passion rage steadily against the existing major-domos to this effect,"Find us men skilled in house-building,acquainted with the laws of atmospheric suction,and capable to cure smoke;"something might come of it!In the lucky circumstance of having one man of real intellect and courage to put at the head of the movement,much would come of it;--a New Downing Street,fit for the British Nation and its bitter necessities in this Era,would come;and from that,in answer to continuous sacred fidelity and valiant toil,all good whatsoever would gradually come.
Of the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy,"--if this should alarm any reader,--I can see risk or possibility in England.
Democracy is hot egh here,fierce egh;it is perennial,universal,clearly invincible among us henceforth.danger it should let itself be flung in chains by sham secretaries of the Pedant species,and accept their vile Age of Pinchbeck for its Golden Age!Democracy clamors,with its Newspapers,its Parliaments,and all its twenty-seven million throats,continually in this Nation forevermore.I remark,too,that,the unconscious purport of all its clamors is even this,"Find us men skilled,"--make a New Downing Street,fit for the New Era!
