LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS r, YU i EDITED BY THOMAS CARLYLE, r "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 I — Jean Paul. ANDOVER: WARREN F. DRAPER. BOSTON: GOULD & LINCOLN. NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY. PHILADELPHIA: SMITH, ENGLISH & CO. 1860. / ^c,*^ 1^ ^-\'o'^ CONTENTS \St.o I. THE PRESENT TIME, ... 1 IT. MODEL PRISONS, ... 61 III. DOVv^'IXG STREET, . . • HI IT. THE NEW DOWNING STREET, . 162 Y. STUMP-ORATOR, . . • -219 TI. PARLIAMENTS, . . .273 YII. HUDSON'S STATUE, . . .323 VIII. JESUITISM 371 182157 THE PRESENT TIME. The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and lieir of all the Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Fntnre, is ever a 'New Era ' to the thinking man ; and comes with new questions and significance, however commonplace it look : to know «7, and what it bids us do, is ever the snm of knowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens; — amid the bustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which if we can- not read and obey, it will not be well with us ! No ; — nor is there any sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same, which indeed in- cludes and presupposes all manner of sins : the sin which our old pious fathers called 'judicial blind- ness ; ' — which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is ; dis- loyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true of all times and days. But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools are arrested to ask the meaning of them ; few 1 THE PKESENT TIME. of the generations of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, disloca- tion, 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 that will sufiice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, miiversal. There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all ! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there ; this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal newbirth, if the ruin is not to be total and final ! 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 the foolish as well as to the wise. Not long ago the world saw, with thoughtless joy. which might have been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not heretofore considered possible or conceiv- able in the world: a Keforming Pope. A simple pious creature, a good country priest, ii] vested un- expectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Tes- tament, declares that this henceforth shall be his rule of governing. No more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul dealing of any kind : God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice shall be done, on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or Father of Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne of St. Peter; and such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to preside in ! THE PRESENT TI3IE. 3 The European populations everywhere hailed the omen ; with shouting and rejoicing, leading-articles and tar-barrels ; thinking people listened with as- tonishment, — not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise ; with awe rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as of victory beyond death! Some- thing pious, grand, and as if awful in that joy, reveal- ing once more the Presence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such men, it was very clear how this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with his New Testament in his hand. An alarming business, that of governing in the throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity! By the rule of veracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter was openly declared, above three hundred years ago, to be a falsity, a huge mistake, a pestilent dead carcass, which this Sun was vv^eary of. More than three hundred years ago, the throne of St. Peter received peremptory judicial notice to quit ; authentic order, registered in Heaven's chancery and since legible in the hearts of all brave men, to take itself away, — to begone, and let us have no more to do with it and its delusions and impious de- liriums ; — and it has been sitting every day since, it may depend upon it, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay exact damages yet for every day it has so sat. Lav/ of veracity ? What this Popedom had to do by the law of veracity, was to give up its foul galvanic life, an offence to gods and men; hon- estly to die, and get itself buried ! Far from this was the thing the poor Pope under- took in regard to it; — and yet on the whole it was essentially this too. " Reforming Pope ? " said one THE PRESENT TIME. of oiif acquaintance, often in those Aveeks, "Was there ever such a miracle ? About to break np that huge imposthume too, by 'curing' it? Turgot and Necker were nothing to this. God is great ; and when a scandal is to end, brings some devoted man to take charge of it in hope, not in despair ! " — But cannot he reform ? asked many simple persons ; — to whom our friend in grim banter w^ould reply : " Re- form a Popedom, — hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to bottom, and consisting mainly now of foul grime and i^ust : stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with tem- porary putty, it may hang together yet a while; begin to hammer at it, solder at it, to what you call mend and rectify it, — it will fall to sherds, as sure as rust is rust ; go all into nameless dissolu- tion, — and the fat in the fire will be a thing worth looking at, poor Pope ! " So accordingly it has proved. The poor Pope, amid felicitations and tar- barrels of various kinds, went on joyfully for a sea- son : but he had awakened, he as no other man could do, the sleeping elements; mothers of the whirlwinds, conflagations, earthquakes. Questions not very solu- ble at present, were even sages and heroes set to solve them, began everyvv^here with new emphasis to be asked. Questions which all official men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till Doomsday. Doomsday Itself had come ; that was the terrible truth ! — For, sure enough, if once the law of veracity be acknowledged as the rule for human things, there will not anywhere be want of work for the reformer ; in very few places do human things adhere quite THE PRESENT TIME. 5 closely to that law ! Here was the Papa of Christen- dom proclaiming that such was actually the case; — whereupoii all over Christendom such results as we have seen. The Sicilians, I think, were the first DOtahle bodytiiat set about applying this new strange rule sanctioned by the general Father ; they said to themselves, We do not by the law of veracity belong to Naples and these Neapolitan Officials; we will, by favor of Heaven and the Pope, be free of these. Fighting ensued ; insurrection, fiercely maintained in the Sicilian Cities; with much bloodshed, much tumult and loud noise, vociferation extending through all newspapers and countries. The effect cf this^ carried abroad by newspapers and rumor, was great in all places; greatest perhaps in Paris, which for six- ty years past has been the City of Insurrections. The French People had plumed themselves on being, whatever else they were not, at least the chosen 'sol- diers of liberty,' who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at least ; and had become, as their orators, editors, and litterateurs diligently taught them, a Peo- ple whose bayonets were sacred, a kind of Messiah Peo- ple, saving a blind world in its own despite, and earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory very considerable indeed. And here were the wretched down-trodden popula:tions of Sicily risen to rival them, and threatening to take the trade out of their hand. No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very Pope's glory as a Reformer, of the very Sicilians fight- ing divinely for liberty behind barricades. — must have bitterly aggravated the feeling of every French.man, as he looked around him, at home, on a Louis-Philij/- 1* 6 THE PRESENT TIME. pism, Avhich had become the scorn of all the world. ^^Ichabod ; is the glory departing from us ? Under the sun is nothing baser, by all accomits and evi- dences, than the system of repression and corruption, of shameless dishonesty and unbelief in anything but human baseness, that we now live under. The Ital- ians, the very Pope have become apostles of liberty, and France is — what is France ! " — We know what France suddenly became in the end of February next; and by a clear enough genealogy, we can trace a con- siderable share in that event to the good simple Pope with the New Testament in his hand. An outbreak, or at least a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable in France : but it had been universally expected that France Avould as usual take the initiative in that matter ; and had there been no reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, France had certainly not broken out then and so, but only afterwards and otherwise. The French explosion, not anticipated by the cunningest men there on the spot scrutinizing it, burst up unlimited, complete, defying computation or control. Close following which, as if by sympathetic subter- ranean electricities, all Europe exploded, boundless, uncontrollable ; and we had the year 1848, one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing, and on the whole humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable De- mocracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of- THE PRESENT TIME. 7 holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane: — Enter, all the world, see what kind of Oiiicial holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigning persons, stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole Vv^orld bellowing in their ear, '•' Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, liistrios not heroes! Off with you, olf ! " — and, what was pecnliar and notable in this year for the first time, the Kings all made haste to go, as if exclaiming, " We are poor liistrios, we sure enough ; — did you want heroes ? Don't kill us ; we couldn't help it ! " Not oim of them turned round, and stood upon his Kingship, as upon a right he could afford to die for, or to risk his skin upon ; by no man- ner of means. That, I say, is the alarming peculiarity at present. Democracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kings conscious that they are but Playactors. The miserable mortals, enacting their High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that this Universe may perhaps bs' all a phantasm and hypocrisis, — the truculent Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters : " Scan- dalous 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 led always by the squeak of your paltry fiddle? Ye miserable, this Universe is not an uphol- stery Puppet-play, but a terrible God's Fact ; and you, I think, — had not you better be gone ! " They fled precipitately, sonje of them with what we may call an exquisite ignominy, — in terror of the treadmill or worse. And everywhere the people, or the populace, take their own government upon themselves ; and open 'kinglessness,' what we call anarchy ^ — how 8 THE PRESENT TIME. happy if it be anarchy plus a street-constable! — is everywhere the order of the day. Such was the iiis- tory, from BaUic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Since the destruction of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Barba- rians, I have known nothing similar. And so, then, there remained no King in Europe ; no King except the Public Haranguer, haranguing on barrel-head, in leading-article ; or getting himself ag- gregated into a National Parliament to harangue. And for about four months all France, and to a great degree all Europe, rongh-ridden by every species of delirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was a weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine at the Hotel-de-Ville ; a most eloquent fair- spoken literary gentleman, whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest, and heaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to be properly '' the first stump-orator in the world, standing too on the highest stump, — for the time." A sorrowful spectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, that poor M. de Lamartine ; with nothing in him but melodious wind and soft sowder, which he and others took for something divine and not diabolic ! Sad enough : the eloquent latest im- personation of Chaos-come-again ; able to talk for itself, and declare persuasively that it is Cosmos ! However, you have but to wait a little, in such cases; all balloons do and must give up their gas in the pressure of things, and are collapsed in a sufficiently wretched manner before long. THE PRESENT TIME. 9 And so ill City after City, street-barricades are piled, and traculeiit, more or less murderous insurrec- tion begins ; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds : and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before ; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflamma- ble mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind. Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests ! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions, — students, yomig men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting every- where on the discontent of the milhons and blowing it into flame, — might give rise to reflections as to tiie character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human atfairs. A changed time since the word Senior (Seigneur, or Elder) was first devised to signify • lord,' or superior ; — as in all languages of men we find it to have been ! Not an honorable document this either, as to the spiritual condition of our epoch. In times when men love wisdom, the old man will ever be venerable, and be venerated, and reckoned noble: in times that love something else than wisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom, and see litlle 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 ceased to be venerable, and has begun to be contemptible ; a foolish boy still, a boy without 10 THE PRESENT TIME. the graces, generosities and opulent strength of young bo3^s. In these days, what of lordsJiip or leadership is stil! to be done, the youth must do it, not the mature or aged man; the mature jnan, hardened into scepti- cal egoism, knows no monition but that of his own frigid cautions, avarices, mean timidities; and can lead nowhitlier towards an object that even seems noble. But to return. This mad state of matters will of coin'se before long allay itself, as it has everywhere begun to do ; the ordinary necessities of men's daily existence can- not comport with it, and these, whatever else is cast aside, will have their way. Some remounting, — very temporary remounting, — of the old machine, under new colors and altered forn^is, will probably ensue soon in most countries: the old histrionic Kings will be admitted back under conditions, under '' Constitutions," with national Parliaments, or the like fashionable adjuncts; and everywhere the old daily life will try to begin again. But there is now no hope that such arrangements can be permanent ; that they can be other than poor temporary make- shifts, which, if they try to fancy and make them- selves pernjanent, will be displaced by new explo- sions recurring more speedily than last time. In such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid raging bottom- less eddies and conllicting sea-currents, not steaduist as on fixed foundations, must European Society con- tinue swaying ; now disastrously tumbling, theu painfully readjusting itself, at ever shorter inter- vals, — till once the vcw rock-basis does come to light, and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and of THE PRESENT TIME. 11 For universal Democracy^ whatever we may think of it, has declared itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live ; and he who has any chance to instruct, or lead, in his days must begin by admit- ting that : new street-barricades, and new anarchies, still more scandalous if still less sanguinary, must return and again return, till governing persons every- where know and admit that. Democracy, it may be said everywhere, is here : — for sixty years now, ever since the grand or First French Revolution, that fact has been terribly announced to all the v/orld ; in message after message, some of them very terrible indeed ; and now at last all the world ought really to believe it. That the world does believe it; that even Kings now as good as believe it, and know, or with just terror surmise, that they are but temporary phantasm Playactors, and that Democracy is the grand, alarming, imminent and indisputable Reality: this, among the scandalous phases we witnessed in the last two years, is a phasis full of hope : a sign that we are advancing closer and closer to the very Problem itself, which it will behove us to solve or die; — that all fighting and campaigning and coali- tioning in regard to the existence of the Problem, is hopeless and superfluous henceforth. The gods have appointed it so ; no Pitt, nor body of Pitts or mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise. Democracy, sure enough, is here : one knows not how long it will keep hidden underground even in Russia ; — and here in England, though we object to it resolutely in the form of street-barricades and insurrectionary pikes, and decidedly will not open doors to it on 12 THE PRESENT TIME. those terms, the tramp of its million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of its bewil- dered thousandfold voice is in all writings and sj^eak- ings, in all thinkings 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 this occasion. What 25 Democracy ; this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, which is everywhere »he portion of our Europe in these latter days ? There hes the question for us. Whence comes it, this uni- versal big black Democracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it ? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the riglit niean- ing of it, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resist- ing and controlling, still hope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find tlie right meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not be possible ! The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, in tlie name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant prac- tice and efibrt, what the meaning of this universal revolt of the European Populations, which calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be. Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast fol- lowing event; in which curiosity finds endlfess scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, cele- brating sky-high ; in' rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that novj the Nev/ Bra, and long- THE PRESENT TIME. 13 expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades ; triumph of civil and reli- gious liberty — O Heaven ! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circum- stances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universal foolish 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. The front wall of yom* wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you to no purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still hang on by the mere beam-ends, and coherency of old carpentry, though in a sloping direc- tion, and depend there till certain poor rusty nails and wormeaten dovetailings give way: — bufis it cheer- ing, in such circumstances, that the whole household burst forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God ' that now they have got a house to their mind ? My dear household, cease singing and psalmodying ; lay aside your fiddles, take out your work-implements, if you have any ; for I can say with confidence the laws of gravitation are still active, and rusty nails, wormeaten dovetailings, and secret coher- ency of old carpentry, are not the best basis for a household ! — In the lanes of Irish cities, I have heard say,, the wretched people are sometimes found living, and nerilously boiling their potatoes, on such swing- floors and inclined planes hanging on by the joist 2 14 THE PRESENT TIME. ends : but I did not liear that they sang very much in celebration of such lodgiiig. No, they slid gently about, sat near the back wall, and perilously boiled their potatoes, in silence for most part ! — High shouts of exultation, in every dialect, by every vehicle of speech and writing, rise from far and near over this last avatar of Democracy in 1848 : and yet, to wise miiids, the first aspect it presents seems rather to be one of boundless misery and sorrow. What can be more miserable than this universal hunting out of the high dignitaries, solemn functionaries, and potent, grave and reverend seigniors of the world ; this storm- ful rising up of the inarticulate dumb masses every- where, against those who pretended to be speaking for them and guiding them? These guides, then, were mere blind men only pretending to see ? These rulers were not ruling at all ; they had merely got on the attributes and clothes of rulers, and were surrepti- tiously drawing the wages, whilo the work remained undone? The Kings were Sham-Kings, playacting as at Drury Lane ; — and what were the people withal that took them for real ? It is probably the hugest disclosure of falsity m human things that was ever at one time made. These reverend Dignitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols and loud-sounding long-admitted professions, vvere mere Impostors, then ? Not a true thing they were doing, but a false thing. The story they told men was a cunningly devised fable ; the gospels they preached to them were not an account of man's real position in this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts and unborn shadows, of traditions, THE PRESENT TIME. 15 cants, indolences, cowardices, — a falsity of falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. Wilfully and against their Avill, these high units of mankind were cheats, then ; and the low millions who believed in them Avere dupes, — a kind of inverse cheats too, or they would not have believed in them so long. A universal Bankruptcy of Imposture; that may be the brief definition of it. Imposture'e very where declared once more to be contrary to Nature ; nobody will change its word into an act any farther : — fallen insol- vent ; unable to keep its head up by these false pre- tences, or make its pot boil any more for the present ! A more scandalous phenomenon, wide as Europe, never afflicted the face of the sun. Bankruptcy everywhere ; foul ignominy, and the abomination of desolation, in all high places : odious to look upon, as the carnage of a battlefield on the morrow morning ; a massacre not of the innocents ; we cannot call it a massacre of the innocents ; but a universal tumbling of Impostors and of Impostures into the street ! Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful? There is a joy in it, to the wise man too ; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it were sadder than any sorrow, — like the vision of immortality, unattainable except through death and the grave ! And yet who would not, in his heart of hearts, feel piously thankful that Imposture has fallen bankrupt ? By all means let it fall bank- rupt ; in the name of God let it do so, with v/hatever misery to itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then, — known it must and shall be, — is hate- ful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understand this everywhere; and swiftly make ready for depart- 16 THE PRESENT TIME. lire, wherever it yet lingers ; and let it learn never to return, if possible ! The eternal voices, very audi- bly again, are speaking to proclaim this messcige, from side to side of the world. Not a very cheering mes- sage, but a very indispensable one. Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here; that we are not permitted to regret its being here, — for who tliat 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 is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, Avhen this to many a man seems strange ! Yet strange to many a man it does seem ; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly ; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere ruin. He lias been used to decent forms long since fallen empty of mean- ing, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial, — what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, — all his life long ; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were j^leased to call reigning ; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honorable members perorated ; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there, did not scrip continue sala- ble, and the banker pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I have always thought, is he that would destroy shams." THE PRESENT TIME. 17 Even so. To such depth have 7, the poor know- ing person of this epoch, got; — ahiiost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the state of apehood aud oxhood ! For never till in quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasplieniy quietly set fortli among the sons of Adam ; nevoj before did the creature called man believe generally in his heart that lies were the rule in this Earth ; that in deliberate long-established lying could there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length other than hinderance and destruction for him. O Heavyside, my solid friend, this is the sorrow of sor- rows : what on earth can become of us till this ac- cursed enchantment, the general summary and conse- cration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart and life of one and all ! Cast forth it will be ; it must, or we are tending, at all moments, — whitherward I do not like to name. Alas, and the casting of it out, to what heights and what depths will it lead us, in the sad universe mostly of lies and shams and hollow phantasms (grown very ghastly now), in which, as in a safe home, we have lived this century or two ! To heights and depths of social and individual divorce from delusions, — of 'reform' in right sacred earnest, of indispensable amendment, and stern sorrowful abro- gation and order to depart, — such as cannot well be spoken at present ; as dare scarcely be thought at present ; which nevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps rather imminent 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 2* 18 THE PRESENT TIME. there will be no working, but only suffering and hope- lessly perisli in g ! — Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, wi'J. itself manage it ? Democracy, once mod- elled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and suchlike, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by ? — To the great mass of men, I am aware, the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side. Democracy they consider to he a kind of ' Government.' The old model, formed long since, and brought to perfection in England now two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nations as the new healing for every woe : '• Set up a Parliament," the Nations everywhere say, when the old King is detected to be a Sham-King, and hunted out or not ; "set up a Parliament; let us have suf- frages, universal suffrages ; and all either at once or by due degrees will be right, and a real Millennium 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 happi- ness of remaining silent, and been without call to speak here. It is because the contrary of all this is deeply manifest to me, and apj)ears to be forgotten by multitudes of my contemporaries, that I have had to undertake addressing a word to them. The contrary of all this; — and tlie farther 1 look into the roots of all this, tiie more hateful, ruinous and dismal does the state of mind ail this could have originated in appear to me. To examine this recipe of a Parliament, how THE PRESENT TIME. 19 fit it is for governing Nations, nay how fit it may now be, in these new limes, for governing England itself where we are used to it so long ; this, too, is an alarming inciuiry. to which all thinking men, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for the small still voices and eternal intimations, across the t(.'mporary clamors and loud blaring proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorous fact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand practical decision or redecision of it from us, — with enormous penalty if we decide it wrong! I think we shall all have to consider this question, one day ; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and uni- versal or any conceivable kind of sutfrages, is the method, then certainly let us set about discovering t!ie kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. But it is possible a Parliament may not be tlie method ! Possible the inveterate notions of the English People may have settled it as the method, and the Everlasting Laws of Nature may have settled it as not the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at alj, if taken as the whole? If a Par- liament with never such suffrages is 7iot the method settled by this latter authority, then it will urgently behove us to become aware of that fact, and to quit such method; — we may depend upon it, however unanimous we be, every step taken in that direction will, by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from hnprovement, not towards it. Not towards it, I say, if so ! Unanimity of voting, — that will do nothing for us if so. Your ship can- 20 THE FEESENT TIME. not doable Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitu- tional manner : the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigor, by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, — the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again ; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic ' admonition ; ' you will be flung half-frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admon- ished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all ! Unanimity on board ship ; — yes indeed, the ship's crew may be very unanimous, which doubtless, for the time being, will be very com- fortable to the ship's crew, and to their Phantasm Captain if they have one : but if the tack they unani- mously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of the Abyss, it will not profit them much ! — Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all ; and they reject the Phantasm species of Captains : one wishes much some other Entities, — since all entities lie under the same rigorous set of laws, — could be brought to show as much wisdom, and sense at least of self-preservation, the first command of Nature. Phantasm Captains with unanimous votings : this is considered to be all the law and all the prophets, at present. THE PRESENT TIME. 21 If a man could shake out of his mind the universal noise of pohtical doctors in this generation and in the Inst generation or two, and consider the matter face to face, with his own sincere intelligence looking at it, 1 venture to say he would find this a very extraordinary method of navigating, whether in the Straits of Magel- lan or the undiscovered Sea of Time. To prosper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement, either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite. That the man or nation can discern what the true regulations of the Universe are in regard to him and his pursuit, and can faithfully and steadfastly fol- low these. These will lead him to victory ; whoever it may be that sets him in the way of these, — were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political Economy, — sets him in the sure way to please the 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 to our affairs? How decipher, with best fidelity, the eternal regulation of the Uni- verse ; and read, from amid such confused embroil- ments of human clamor and folly, what the real Divine Message to us is? A divine message, or eternal regu- lation of the Universe, there verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man : faith- fully follov/ing this, said procedure or affair will prosv per, and have the whole Universe to second it, and 22 THE PRESENT TIME. carry it, across the flnctuating contradictions, to- wards a victorious goal ; not following this,- mistak- ing this, disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain lor every affair. How find it ? All the world answers me, '' Count heads ; ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell." Universal suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of heads ? Well, — I per- ceive we have got into strange spiritual latitudes in- deed. Within the last half century or so, either the Universe or else the heads of men must have al- tered very much. 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 of somewhat abstruse nature; by no means carrying its secret written on its face, legible to every passer-by ; on the contrary, obstinatel}^ hiding its secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons, and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone, whose number was 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 in- terests in the Universe have become amazingly sim- plified of late ; capable of being voted on with effect by almost anybody? ' To buy in the cheapest mar- ket, and sell in the dearest : ' truly if that is the sum- mary of his social duties, and the final divine-message he has to follow, we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is not, and never was, or can be ? If the Universe will not carry on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no higher aim, — being still 'a Temple and Hall of Doom,' not a mere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? THE PRESENT TIME. 23 If the iinfathomal)]e Universe has decided to reject Human Beavers pretending to be Men ; and will abol- ish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their 'markets' and them, unless they think of it? 111 that case it were better to think of it ; and the Democracies and Universal Suffrages, 1 can observe, will require to modify themselves a good deal! Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation that could subsist upon Democracy. Of ancient Repub- lics, and Demoi and Popidi, we have heard much ; but it is now pretty well admitted to be nothing to our purpose ; — a universal-suffrage republic, or a general- suffrage one, or any but a most limited-suffrage one, never came to light, or dreamed of doing so, in ancient times. When the mass of the population were slaves, and the voters intrinsically a kind of kings, or men born to rule others; when the voters were real 'aris- tocrats' and manageable dependants of such, — then doubtless voting, and confused jumbling of talk and intrigue, might, without immediate destruction, or the need of a Cavaignac to intervene with cannon and sweep the streets clear of it, go on ; and beautiful developments of manhood might be possible beside it, 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 often supposed. Alas, no : the reflective constitutional mind has misgivings as to the origin of old Greek and Roman nobleness ; and indeed knows not how this or any other human nobleness could well be 'originated,' or brought to pass, by voting or without voting, in this world, except by the 24 THE PRESENT TIME. grace of God very mainly ; — and remembers with a sigh, that of the Seven Sages themselves, no fewer than three were bits of Despotic Kings, TJpawoi, ' Tyrants ' so-called (such being greatly wanted there) ; and that the other four w^ere very far from Red He- publicans, if of any political faith whatever ! We may quit the Ancient Classical concern, and leave it to College clubs and speculative debating societies, in these late days. Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or that are still on trial, — of these also it is not needful to say any word. But there is one modern instance of Democracy nearly perfect, the Republic of the United States, which has actually subsisted for threescore years or more, w^ith immense success as is affirmed ; to which many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations, and a ' Model Republic' Is not America an instance in point ? AVhy should not all Nations subsist and flourish on Democracy, as America does ? Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkind- ly, to speak unpatriotically^ if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many re- spects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy ; and, wdth the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet w^ith any much finer kind of implements, are trium- phantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the fu- ture history of the world ; — doing, in their day and THE PKESENT TIME. 25 generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model any- thing, tlie wise 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 t^vci of the world, is, strictly considered, still a thing they are but striving for, and indeed have not yet done much towards attaining. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there ; "went over with them from the Old Puritan English work- shop, ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from England ready-made, — their common English Language, and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate and now, as it were, inborn reverence for the Constable's Staff; two quite immense attainments, which Eng- land had to spend much blood, and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long, in achieving ; — and what new elements of polity or nationhood, what noble new phasis of human arrangement, or social device worthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light in America? Cotton-crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light ; and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respect the con- stable can live, for the present, without Government : this comes to light ; and the profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, here uttering itself as silent patient anspeakable ennui, there coming out as vague elegiac vvailings, that there is still next to nothing more. ' Anarchy ^/«s a street-constable:' that also is anar- chic to me, and other than quite lovely ! I foresee too that, long before the waste lands are 26 THE PRESENT TIME. full, the very street-constable, on these poor terms will have become impossible : without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I do not see how he conld continue possible many weeks. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and con- stitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world : nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic ancestors, saying, " It is well, it is well ! " Corn and bacon are granted : not a very sublime boon, on such conditions ; a boon moreover which, on such conditions, cannot last ! No : America too will have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this ; to crack its sinews, and all bnt break its heart, as the rest of ns have had -) do, in thousandfold wrestle with the Pythons and Mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for iViC gods. America's battle is yet to fight ; and we, fciUTOwful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them ; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twi- light Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very successful manner ; hitherto, in spite of her 'roast-goose with apple-sance,' she is not much. ' Roast-goose with apple-sauce for the poorest working man : ' well surely that is some- thing, — thanks to your respect for the street-consta-. ble, and to your continents of fertile waste land ; — but that, even if it could continue, is by no means THE PRESENT TI'ME. 27 enough ; that is not even an instalment towards what Avill be required of you. My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry, and resources, I beheve to be almost imspeakable ; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that one could wor- ship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there ? None ; the American consins have yet done none of these things. ''What they have done?" growls Smelfungus, tired of the subject : '' They have doubled their population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded exam- ple, Eighteen Millions of the greatest bo?^es ever seen in this world before : — that, hitherto, is their feat in History ! " — And so we leave them, for the present ; and cannot predict the success of Democracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from their example. Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, De- mocracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible! So much, with certainty of loud astonished contradiction from all manner of men at present, but with sure appeal to the Law of Nature and the ever-abiding Fact, may be suggested and asserted 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 every exercise of the same. A most free commonwealth of 'voters;' but with Eternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced by Almighty Power ! This is the model of * constitutions ; ' this : nor in any Nation whore there 28 THE PRESENT TIME. has not yet (in some supportable and withal some constantly-increasing degree) been confided to the Noblest, with his select series of Nobler, the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Igno- ble, has the ' Kingdom of God,' which we all pray for, ' come,' nor can ' His will ' even tend to be ' done on Earth as it is in Heaven ' till then. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christian and Anti- Christian, and all manner of men, are invited to reflect on this. They will find it to be the truth of the case. The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low ; that is, in all times and in all places, the Almighty Maker's Law. To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate hi?7i by whatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from old wont, this, little as we may regard it, is a practical blasphemy forevermore, and Nature will in no wise forget it.^ Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, of modern Deniocracy everywhere. It is the Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest ; it is God Almighty's Noble, not the Court-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must, in some approxi- mate degree, be raised to the supreme place ; he and not a counterfeit, — under penalties ! Penalties deep as death, and at length terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend! — Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place ; does any sane man delib- erately believe such a thing? That nevertheless is the indispensable result, attain it how we may : if that is attained, all is attained ; if not that, nothing. He that cannot believe the ballot-box to be attaining it, will be comparatively indifferent to the ballot-box. THE PRESENT TIME. 29 Excellent for keeping the ship's crew at peace, under their Phantasm Captain ; hut unserviceable, under such, for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, that there should be human beings requiring to have these things argued of, at this late time of day ! I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governed by the wise ; to be guided in the right path by those who know it better than they. This is the first 'right of man;' compared with wliich all other rights are as nothing, — mere superfluities, corol- laries which will follow of their own accord out of tbis; if they be not contradictions to this, and less than nothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; far other indeed. Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it implies preservation of themselves withal ; but intrinsically it is the harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his baud. A duty which he would fain enough shirk ; which ac- cordingly, in these sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he has long everywhere been endeavoring to re- duce to its minimum, and has in fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. It is an ungoverned world ; a world which we flatter ourselves will henceforth need no governing. On the dust of our heroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is well, it is well ! By inheritance of their noble strug- gles, we have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we idly dreaming it would grow spontan<5ous crops forever, — find it now in a too questionable state ; peremptorily 3* 30 THE PRESENT TIME. requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real 'agriculture' is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with ballot-box or otherwise) than to plough ! Who would govern that can get along without governing ? He that is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained. By multifarious de- vices we have been endeavoring to dispense with governing; and by very superficial speculations, of laissez-faire^ supply-and-demand, Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it certainly enough betokens ? Cut every human relation which has anywhere grown uneasy sheer asunder ; reduce whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition of nomadic : — in other words, loosen by assiduous wedges in every joint, the whole fabric of social existence, stone from stone ; till at last, all now being loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of rev- olutionary rage ; and, lying as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb four-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 where it is not needed : — I am sure if I could make him ' happy,' I should be willing 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 to yourselves among others; using the leather in a tyrannous uimecessary manner ; with- holding, or scantily furnishing, the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse-subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. " Am I not a horse, and /i-^/ //'-brother ? " — To remedy Avhich, so far as remediable, fancy — the horses all 'eman- cipated ; ' 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 long as grass lasts, I dare say they are very happy, or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, on a dry spring nxorning, with a sieve of oats in his 34 THE PKESENT TIME. hand, and agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy ? Help me to plongh this day, Black Dob- bin : oais in full measure if thou wilt. " Hlniih, No — thank!" snorts Black Dobbin; he prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not thou perhaps? "Hlunh!" — Gray Joan, then, my beautiful broad-bottomed mare, — O Heaven, she too answers Hlunh ! Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn-crops are ended in this world ! — For the sake, if not of Hodge, then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice might now cease, and a new and better one try to begin. Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emanci- pate them ! The fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. To have in this habitable Earth no grass to eat, — in Black Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none; — to roam aimless, wasting the seedfields of the world ; and be hunted home to Chaos, by the due watch-dogs and due hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were never seen before ! These things are not sport ; they are terribly true, in this country at this hour. Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary prin- ciple, Time will mend it : — till British industrial THE PRESENT TT:.IE. 35 existence seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral; a hideous living Golgotlia of souls and bodies buried alive ; such a Curtius'-gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. These scenes, which the Moniiitg Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men, — thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers have seldom done, — ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty-thou- sand outcast Needlewomen v/orking themselves swiftly to death ; three-million Paupers rotting in forced idle- ness, helping said Needlewomen to die : these are but items in the sad leger of despair. Thirty-thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrefying well of abominations ; they have oozed in upon London, from the universal Stygian quagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated in the well of the concern, to that extent. British charity is smitten to the heart, at the laying bare of such a scene ; passionately undertakes, by enormous sub- scription of money, or by other enormous effort, to redress that individual 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 begin before night to fill itself anew. The universal Sty- gian quagmire is still there ; opulent in women ready to be ruined, and in men ready. Towards the same sad cesspool will these waste currents of human ruin ooze and gravitate as heretofore ; except in draining the universal quagmire itself there is no remedy. " And for that, what is the method?" cry many in an angry rnanner. To whom, for the present, I answer 36 THE PRESENT TIME. only, ''Not 'emancipation,' it would seem, my friends ; not the cutting loose of human ties, some- thing far the reverse of tliat ! " Many things hav^e been written about shirtmak- ing ; but here perhaps is the saddest thing of all, not Avritten anywhere till now, that I know of. Shirts by the thirty-thousand are made at twopence-half- penny each; — and in the meanwhile no needle- woman, distressed or other, can be procured in Lon- don 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 high houses and in low, there is the same answer : No real needlewoman, ' distressed' or other, has been found attainable in any of the houses I frequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who demand considerable wages, and have a deepish appetite for beer and viands, I hear of every where ; but their sewing proves too often a distracted pucker- ing and botching ; not sewing, only the fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination of the mind. Good sempstresses are to be hired in every village ; and in London, with its famishing thirty-thousand, not at all, or hardly. — Is not No-government beautiful in human business ? To such length has the Leave- alone principle carried it, by way of organizing labor, in this affair of shirlmaking. Let us hope the Leave- alone principle has now got its apotheosis; and taken wing towards higher regions than ours, to deal henceforth with a class of affairs more appropriate for it! Reader, did you ever hear of ' Constituted Anar- chy ? ' Anarchy ; the choking, sweltering, deadly THE PRESENT TIME. 37 and killing rule of No-rnle ; the consecration of cu- pidity, and braying folly, and dim stupidity and base- ness, in most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of liv- ing bodies and immortal souls ? Solemn Bishops and high Dignitaries, our divine ' Pillars of Fire by night,' debating meanwhile, with their largest wigs and gravest look, upon something they call ' pre- venient grace ? ' Alas, our noble men of genius. Heaven's real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by the wasteful time; — preappointed they everywhere, and assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to 'rise in Parliament,' to compose orations, write books, or in short speak" words, for the approval of reviewers ; instead of doing real kingly wor^k to be approved of by the gods ! Our ' Government,' a highly ' responsible ' one ; responsible to no God that I can hear of, but to the twenty-seven million gods of the shilling gallery. A Government tumbling and drifting on the whirl- pools and mud-deluges, floating atop in a conspicuous manner, no-whither, — like the carcass of a drowned ass. Authentic Chaos come up into this sunny Cos- mos again ; and all men singing Gloria in excelsis to it. In spirituals and temporals, in field and workshop, from Manchester to Dorsetshire, from Lambeth Palace to the Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meet and toil and traffic together, — Anarchy, Anarchy ; and only the street-constable (though with ever-increas- ing difficulty) still maintaining himself in the middle of it ; that so, for one thing, this blessed exchange of slop-shirts for the souls of women may transact itself 4 38 THE PRESENT TIME. in a peaceable manner ! — I, for my part, do profess myself in eternal opposition to this, and discern well that 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, Voluiitary Principle, Dangers of Centraliza- tion, and the like? It is really getting too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, the people cannot be taught to read. British Liberty, shuddering to interfere with the rights of capital, takes six or eight miUions of money annually to feed the idle laborer whom it dare not employ. For British Liberty we live over poison- ous cesspools, gully-drains, and detestable abomina- tions ; and omnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself British Liberty produces — what? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, and apparent- ly little 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 for something other and farther. We have achieved British Liberty hun- dreds of years ago ; and are fast growing, on the strength of it, one of the most 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 her Constitution ; all Nations striving towards it ; poor France swimming these last sixty years in seas ot' horrid dissolution and confusion, reso- lute to attain this blessedness of free voting, or to die THE PRESENT TIME. ill chase of it. Prussia too, solid Cfermany itself, has all broken out into crackling of musketry, loud pamphleteering and Frankfort parliamenting and pala- verino- ; Germany too will scale the sacred mountains, how steep soever, and, by talisman of ballot-box, inhabit a political Elysium henceforth. All the Nations have that one hope. Very notable ; and rather sad to the humane onlooker. For it is sadly conjectured, all the Nations labor somewhat under a mistake as to England, and the causes of her freedom and her prosperous cotton-spinning ; and have much misread the nature of her Parliament, and the effect of ballot-boxes and universal-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, real Governing Persons (called Peers, Mitred Abbots, Lords, Knights of the Shire, or howsoever called), actually riding each his section of the country, — and possessing (it must be said) in the lump, or when assembled as a Council, uncommon patience, devoutness, probity, discretion and good fortune, — that the said Parliament ever came to be good for much ? In that case it will not be easy to ' imitate ' the English Parliament ; and the ballot-box and sufimge will be the mere bow of Robin Hood, which it is given to very few to bend, or shoot with to any perfection. And if the Peers become mere big Capitalists, Railway Directors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings of Scrip, loithout lordly quality, or other virtue except cash; and the Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors, masters of Parliamentary Eloquence, Doctors of Political Econcmy, and such- 40 THE PRESENT TIME. like ; and all have to be elected by a uni\rersal-suffrage ballot-box, — I do not see how tlie English Parlia- ment itself will long continue sea-worthy ! Nay, I find England, in her own big dnmb 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 unattain- able by the world, and not much worth attaining ? England, as I read the omens, is now called a second 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 ! Poor England must herself again, in these new strange times, the old methods being quite worn out, ' learn how to live.' That now is the terrible problem for England, as for all the Nations ; and she alone of all, not yet sunk into open Anarchy, but left with time for repentance and amend- ment; she, wealthiest of all in material resource, in spiritual energy, in ancient loyalty to law, and in the qualities that yield such loyalty, — she perhaps alone of all may be able, with huge travail, and the strain of all her faculties, to accomplish some solution. She will have to try it, she has now to try it ; she must accomplish it, or ])erish from 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 eter- nally elected for it by the Maker Himself. Eng- land's one hope is in these, just now. They are among the silent, I believe ; mostly far away from platforms and public palaverings ; not speaking forth the image of their nobleness in transitory words, but THE PRESENT TIME. 41 imprinting it, each on his own little section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiant actions, that will endure foreverniore. They must sit silent no longer. They are summoned to assert themselves; to act forth, and articulately vindicate, in the teeth of jiowling multitudes, of a world too justly maddened into all manner of delirious clamors, what of wisdom they derive from God. England, and the Eternal Voices, summon them ; poor Englaiid never so needed them as now. Up, be doing everywhere : the hour of crisis has verily come ! In all sections of English life, the godmade king is needed ; is pressingly de- manded in most ; in some, cannot longer, without peril as of conflagration, be dispensed with. He, wjieresoever he finds himself, can say, " Here too am I wanted ; here is the kingdom I have to subjugate, and introduce God's Laws into, — God's Laws, in- stead of Mammon's and M'Croudy's, and the Old Anarch's ! Here is my work, here or nowhere." Are there many such, who will answer to the call, in England ? It turns on that, whether England, rapid- ly crumbling in these very years and months, shall go down to the Abyss as her neighbors have all done, or survive to new grander destinies withoiU solution of continuity! Probably the chief question of the world at present. The true 'commander' and king: he who knows for himself the divine Appointments of this Universe, the Eternal Laws ordained by God the Maker, in con- forming to which lies victory and felicity, in departing from which lies, and forever must lie, sorrow^and defeat, for each and all of the Posterity of Adam in 4 * 42 THE PRESEITT TIME. every time and every place ; he who has sworn fealty to these, and dare alone against the world assert these, and dare not with the wirole world at his back deflect from these; — he, I know too well, is a rare man. Difficnlt to discover ; not quite discoverable, I appre- hend, by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and riddling of the popular clamor according to the most approved methods. He is not sold at any shop I know of, — though sometimes, as at the sign of the Ballot-box, he is advertised for sale. Difficult indeed to discover: and not very much assisted, or encouraged in late times, to discover Idmself; — which, I think, might be a kind of help? Encouraged rather, and com- manded in all ways, if he be wise, to Jiide himself, and give place to the windy Counterfeit of himself; such as the universal-suffrages can recognize, such as loves the most sweet voices of the universal-suffrages ! — O Peter, what becomes of such a People ; what can become ? Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that fateful Hebrew Prophecy, I think the fatefullest of all, which sounds daily through the streets, " Ou' clo ! On' clo ! " — A certain People, once upon a time, clamorously voted by overwhelming majority, '-Not he ; Barabbas, not he ! Him, and what lie is, and what he deserves, we know well enough : a reviler of the Chief Priests and sacn^d Chancery wigs ; a sedi- tious Heretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind: To the gallows and the cross with him ! Barabbas is our man ; Barabbas, we are /or Barabbas ! " They got Barabbas : — have you well considered what a fund of purblind obduracy, of THE PRESENT TIME. 43 oj)3.que Jlmikey ism grown truculent and transcendent ; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for the eternal nobU^nesses ; sordid loyalty to tiie prosperous Semblances, and high-treason agaiiist the Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens in these natures ? For it was the consummation of a long series of such ; they and their fathers had long kept voting so. A singular People ; who could both produce such divine men, and then could so stone and crucify them : a People terrible from the beginning! — Well, they got Barab- bas ; and they got, of course, such guidance as Ba- rabbas and the like of him could give them; and, of course, they stumbled ever downwards and devil- wards, in their truculent stitfnecked way; and — and, at this hour, after eigliteen centuries of sad fortune, they prophetically sing " Ou' clo ! " in all the cities of the world. Might the world, at this late hour, but take note of them, and understand their song a little ! — Yes, there are some things the universal-suftrage can decide, — and about these it will be exceedingly useful to consult the universal-suffrage : but in regard to most things of importance, and in regard to the choice of men especially, there is (astonishing as it may seem) next to no capability on the part of uni- versal-sutfrage. — I request all candid persons, who liave never so little originality of mind, and every man has a little, to consider this. If true, it involves such a change in our now fashionable modes of procedure as fills me with astonishment and alarm. If popuku- suffrage is not the way of ascertaining what the Laws of the Universe are, and who it is that will best guide us in the way of these, — then woe is to us if we do 44 THE PRESENT TIME. not take another method. Delolme on the British Constitution will not save us; deaf will the Parcse be to votes of the House, to leading articles, constitu- tional philosophies. The other method — alas, it involves a stopping short, or vital change of direction, in the glorious career which all Europe, with shouts heaven-high, is now galloping along : and that, hap- pen when it may, will, to many of us, be probably a rather surprising business ! One thing I do know, and can again assert Vv^ith great confidence, supported by the whole Universe, and by some Two Hundred generations of men, who have left us some record of themselves there. That the few Wise will have, by one method or another, to take command of the innumerable Foolish ; that they must be got to take it ; — and that, in fact, since Wisdom, which means also Yalor and heroic Nobleness, is alone strong in this world, and one wise man is stronger than all men unwise, they can be got. That they must take it; and having taken, must keep it, and do their 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 backbone of all Future So- ciety, as it has been of all Past,; and that without it, there is no Society possible in the Avorld. And what a business this will be, before it end in some degree of victory again, and whether the time for shouts of triumph and tremendous cheers upon it is yet come, or not yet by a great way, I perceive too well ! A business to make us all very serious indeed. A busi- ness not to be accomplished but by noble manhood, and devout all-daring, all-enduring loyalty to Heaven, THE PRESENT TIME. 45 such as fatally sleeps at present, — such as is not dead at present eilfier, unless the gods have doomed this world of theirs to die ! A business which long cen- turies of faithful travail and heroic agon}^, on the part of all the noble that are born to us, will not end ; and which to us. of this ' tremendous-cheering ' century, it were blessedness very great to see success- fully begun. Begun, tried by all manner of methods, if there is one wise Statesman or man left among us, it verily must be ; — begun, successfully or unsuccess- fully, we do hope to see it ! In all European countries, especially in England, one class of Captains and commanders of men, recog- nizable as the beginning of a new real and not im- aginary ' Aristocracy,' has already in some measure developed itself: the Captains of Industry ; — happily the class who above all, or at least first of all, are wanted in this time. In the doing of material work, 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 be commanded : the sad class of brother men whom we had to describe as 'Hodge's emancipated horses.' reduced to roving famine, — this too has in all 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 truly said, the 'Organiza- tion of Labor ' (not organizable by the mad methods 46 THE PRESENT TIME. tried hitherto) is the universal vital Problem of the world. To bring these hordes of outcast captainless sol- diers under due captaincy? This is really the ques- tion of questions; on the answer to which turns, among other things, the fate of all Governments, constitutional and other, — the possibility of their continuing to exist, or the impossibility. Cai)tainless, uncommanded, these wretched outcast ' soldiers,' since they cannot starve, must needs become banditti, st^-eet-barricaders, — destroyers of every Government that cannot put them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short render life human to them. Our English plan of Poor I^aws, which we once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently fast breaking down. Ireland, now admitted into the Idle Workhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces. Tliat never was a 'human' destiny for any honest son of Adam ; nowhere but in England could it have lasted at all ; and now, with Ireland sharer in 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 dreadfully rotten in many of its tim- bers I believe, has sprung a leak : spite of all hands at the pump, the water is rising ; the Ship, I perceive, will founder if you cannot stop this leak ! To bring these Captainless under due captaincy ? The anxious thoughts of all men that do think are turned upon that question ; and their efforts, tliough as yet blindly, and to no purpose, under the multifari- ous impediments and obscurations, all point thither- ward. Isolated men, and their vague eiibrts, cannot THE PRESENT TIME. 47 doit. Government everywhere is called upon, — in England as loudly as elsewhere, — to give the initia- tive. A new strange task of these new epoclis ; which no Government, never so 'constitutional,' can escape from undertaking. For it is vitally necessary to the existence of Society itself; it must be under- taken, and succeeded in too, or worse will follow, — and, as we already see in Irish Connaught and some other places, will follow soon. To whatever thing still calls itself by the name of Government, were it never so 'constitutional and impeded by offi- cial impossibilities, all men will naturally look for help, and direction vvdiat to do, in this extremity. If help or direction is not given ; if the thing called Government merely drift and tumble to and fro, no- whither, on the popular vortexes, like some carcass of a drowned ass, constitutionally put 'at the top of affairs,' — popular indignation will infallibly accumu- late upon it ; one day, the popular lightning, descend- ing forked and horrible from the black air, will annihilate said supreme carcass, and smite it home to its native ooze again! — Your Lordship, this is too true, though irreverently spoken : indeed one knows not how to speak of it ; and to me it is infinitely sad and miserable, spoken or not ! — Unless perhaps the Vol- utitary Principle will still help us through? Perhaps this Irish leak, in such a rotten distressed condition- of the Ship, with all the crew so anxious about it, Y/ill be kind enough to stop of itself? — Dismiss that hope, your Lordship ! Let all real and imaginary Governors of England, at the pass we have arrived at, dismiss forever that fallacious fatal 48 THE PRESENT TIME. solace to their donothingism : 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 of England really ought to recognize his situation ; to discern that, doing nothing, and merely drifting to and fro, in however constitutional a manner, he is a squan- derer of precious moments, moments that perhaps are priceless; a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, to a Chief Governor of England, worthy of that high name, — surely to him, as to every living man, in every conceivable situation short of the Kingdom of the Dead, — there is something possible; some plan of action other than that of standing mildly, v/ith crossed arms, till he and we — sink ? Complex as his situation is, he, of all Governors now extant among these distracted Nations, has, as I compute, by far the greatest possibilities. The Captains, actual or poten- tial, are there, and the million Captaiidess ; and such resources for bringing them together as no other has. To these outcast 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 nomadic Lackalls, now stagnating or roaming everywhere, drowning the face of the world (too truly) into an untentable swamp and Stygian quag- mire, has the 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 Delnge ? " A Chief Governor that can front his Irish difficulty, and THE PRESENT TIME. 49 Steadily contemplate the horoscope of Irish and Brit- ish Pauperism, and whitherward it is leading him and us, in this humor, must be a — What shall we call such a Chief Governor ? Alas, in spite of old use and wont, — little other than a tolerated Solecism, growing daily more intolerable ! He decidedly ought to have some word to say on this matter, — to be incessantly occupied in getting something which he could practically say ! — Perhaps to the following, or a much finer eifect ? Speech of the British Prime Minister to the floods of Irish and other Beggars, the able-bodied LackallSj 7iotnadic or stationary, and the General Assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the Pauper Populations of these Realms. '< Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you, criminal many of you, miserable all ; the sight of you fills me with astonishment and despair. What to do with you I know not ; long have I been meditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count : so many of you fallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary ; and, fearful to think, every new unit that falls is loading so much more the chain that drags the others over. On the edge of the pre- cipice hang uncounted millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a-day. They hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselves down, holding on with all their strength ; but falling, falling one after another ; and the chajn is getting 60 THE PRESENT TIME. heavy ^ so that ever more fall ; and who at last wili 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 now know for some time back : That you cannot be left to roam abroad in this ungnided manner, stumbling over the precipices, and loading ever heavier the fatal chain upon those who might be able to stand ; that this of locking you up in tem- porary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil; — that this is not the plan ; and that it never was, or could out of England have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it ! " Yagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, all this that *has been sung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement, emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon, brought upon us by a stern necessity, — but now ordered by a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary jargon, I say ; made up of sense and nonsense, — sense in small quantities, and nonsense in very large ; — and, if taken for the whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinite nonsense eternally untrue. All men, I think, will soon have to quit this, to consider this as a thing pretty well achieved ; and to look out towards another thing much more needing achievement at the time that now is. THE PRESENT Ti:.IE. 51 "All men will have to quit it, I believe. But to you, my indigent friends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived ! To talk of glorious self-govern- ment, of suffrages and hustings, and the fight of free- dom and suchlike, is a vain thing in your case. By all human definitions and conceptions of the said fight of freedom, you for your part have lost it, and can fight no more. Glorious self-government is a glory not for you, — not for Hodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No ; I say. No. You, for your part, have tried it, -dudi failed. Left to walk your own road, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, your short sight could not descry the pitfalls ; the deadly tumult and press has whirled you hither and thither, regardless of your struggles and your shrieks ; and here at last you lie ; fallen flat into the ditch, drowning there and dying, unless the others that are still standing please to pick you up. The others that still stand have their own difficulties, I can tell you ! — But you, by imperfect energy and redundant appetite, by doing too little work and drinking too much beer, you (I bid you observe) have proved that you cannot do it ! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And I am to pick you up again, on these mad terms ; help you ever again, as with our best heart's blood, to do what, once for all, the gods have made impossible? To load the fatal chain with your perpetual staggerings and sprawlings ; and ever again load it, till we all lie sprawling? My indigent incompetXo m<5anR'he left undone ! A sacred gospel from the flighest ; not to be smothered under horsehair and bombazine, or drowned in platform froth, or in any- wise omitted or neglected, without the most alarming penalties to all concerned ! Neglect to treat the hero as hero, the penalties, — ' which are inevitable too, 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 once will your Thirty-thousand Needlewomen, your Three-million Paupers, your Connaught fallen into potential Cannibalism, and other fine conse- quences of the practice, come to light; — though come to light they will ; and " Ou' clo' ! " itself may be in store for you, if you persist steadily enough. But neglect to treat even your declared scoundrel as scoundrel, this is the last consunmiation of the pro- cess, the drop by which the cup runs over; the pen- alties of this, most alarming, extensive, and such as you little dream of, will straightway very rapidly come. Dim oblivion of Right and Wrong, among the masses of your population, will come; doubts as to Right and Wrong, indistinct notion that Right and Wrong are not eternal, but accidental, and settled by uncertain votings and talking, will come. Pruri- ent influenza of Platform Benevolence, and ' Paradise to All-and-sundry,' will come. In the general pu- trescence of your 'religions,' as you call them, a strange new religion, named of Universal Love, with Sacraments mainly of Divorce, with Balzac, Sue and Company for Evangelists, and Madam Sand for Vir- MODEL PRISONS. 103 gin, will come, — and results fast following there- from which will astonish you very much ! ' The terrible anarchies of these years,' says Crabbe, in his Radiator^ ' are brought npon us by a necessity too visible. By the crime of Kings — alas, yes; but by that of Peoples too. Not by the crime of one class, bnt by the fatal obscuration, and all but oblit- eration, of the sense of Right and Wrong in the minds and practices of every class. What a scene in the drama of Universal History, this of ours ! A world-wide loud bellow and bray of universal Misery ; lowing^ with crushed maddened heart, its inarticulate prayer to Heaven : — very pardonable to me, and in some of its transcendent developments, as in the grand French Revolution, most respecta- ble and ever-memorable. For Injustice reigns every- where ; and this murderous struggle for what they call " Fraternity," and so forth, has a spice of eter- nal sense in it, though so terribly disfigured ! Amal- gam of sense and nonsense ; eternal sense by the grain, and temporary nonsense by the square mile ; as is the habit with poor sons of men. Which par- donable amalgam however, if it be taken as the pure final sense, I must warn you and all creatures, is unpardonable, criminal, and fatal nonsense ; — with which I, for one, will take care not to concern myself! * Dogs should not he taught to eat leather, says the old adage ; no ; — and- where by general fault and er- ror and the inevitable nemesis of things, the universal kennel is set to diet upon leather ; and from its keepers, its '^ Liberal Premiers," or whatever their title is, will 204 MODEL PRISONS. accept or expect nothing else, and calls it by the pleas- ant name of progress, reform, emancipation, abolition^ principles, and the like, — I consider the fate of said kennel and of said keepers to be a thing settled. Red republic in Phrygian nightcap, orgaiiization of labor a la Louis Blanc ; street barricades, and then murderous cannon-volleys a la Cavaignac and Windischgratz, fol- low out of one another, as grapes, must, new wine, and sour all-splitting vinegar do: — vinegar is but vin~ aigre, or the selfsame "wine" grown sharp ! If, moreover, I find the Worship of Human Nobleness abolished in any country, and a »c?^ astonishing Phal- lus-Worship, with universal Balzac-Sand melodies and litanies in treble and in bass, established in its stead, what can I compute but that Nature, in horrible throes, will repugn against such substitution, — that, in short, the astonishing New Phallus- Worship, with its finer sensibilities of the heart, and " great satisfying loves," with its sacred kiss of peace for scoundrel and hero alike, with its all-embracing Brotherhood, and univer- sal Sacrament of Divorce, will have to 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 fitly preside 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, and considered that Fate and all Nature had from the beginning doomed him, to die MODEL PRISONS. 105 with ignominy. Certain crimes there were of a su- preme nature ; him that had perpetrated one of these they beUeved to have declared himself a prince of scoundrels. Him once convicted they laid hold of, nothing doubting ; — bore him, after judgment, to the deepest convenient Peatbog; plunged him in there, drove an oaken frame down over him, solemnly in the name of gods and men : " There, prince of scoundrels, that is what we have had to think of thee, on clear acquaintance ; our grim good-night to thee is that ! In the name of all the gods lie there, and be our partner- ship with thee dissolved henceforth. It will be better for us, we imagine ! " My friends, after all this beautiful whitewash and himianity and prison discipline ; and such blubbering and whimpering, and soft Litany to divine and also to quite other sorts of Pity, as we have had for a century -now, — give me leave to remind you that that of the Ancient Germans too was a thing inexpressibly neces- sary to keep in mind. If that is not kept in mind, the universal litany to Pity is a mere universal nuisance, and torpid blasphemy against the gods. I do not much respect it, that purblind blubbering and litanying, as it is seea at present ; and the litanying over scoundrels I go the length of disrespecting, and in some cases even of detesting. Yes, my friends, scoundrel is scoundrel : that remains forever a fact ; and there exists not in the earth 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't whitewasli ; this one won't. The one method clearly is. That, after fair trial, you dissolve partnership with him ; send him, 103 MODEL PRISONS. in the name of Heaven, whither he is striving all this while, and have done with him. And, in a time like IJjis, I would advise you, see likewise that you be speedy about it ! For there is immense work, and of a far hopefuller sort, to be done elsewhere. Alas, alas, to see once the ' prince of scoundrels,' the Supreme Scoundrel, him whom of all men the gods liked worst^ solemnly laid hold of, and hung upon the gallows in sight of the people ; what a lesson to all the people ! Sermons might be preached ; the Son of Thunder and the Mouth of Gold might turn their periods now with some hope ; for here, in the most impressive way, is a divine sermon acted. Didactic as no spoken sermon could be. Didactic, devotional too ; — in awed solemnity, a recognition that Eternal Justice rules the world ; that at the call of this, human pity shall fall silent, and man be stern as his Master and Mandatory is ! — Understand too that except lipon a basis of even such rigor, sorrowful, silent inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, there is no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and plenti- ful without that basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy ; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blink- ard dimness of head, — contemptible as a druid^ard's tears. To see our Supreme Scoundrel hung upon the gal- lows, alas, that is far from us just now ! There is a worst man in England, too, — curious to think of, — whom it would be inexpressibly advantageous to lay hold of, and hang, the first of all ! But we do not know him with the least certainty, the least approach even to a guess, — such buzzards and dullards and poor MODEL PRISONS. 107 children of the Dusk are we, in spite of our Statistics, Unshackled Presses, and Torches of Knowledge ; — not eagles soaring sunward, not brothers of the light- nings and the radiances, we ; a dim horn-eyed owl- population, intent mainly on the catching of mice ! Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike Avith the supreme hero, is very far from being known. Nor have we the smallest apparatus for dealing with either of them, if he were known. Our supreme scoundrel sits, I conjec' ture, well-cushioned, in high places, at this time ; rolls softly through the world, and lives a prosperous gen- tleman ; instead of sinking him in peatbogs, we mount the brazen image of him on high columns ; such is the world's temporary judgment about its supreme scoun- drels : a mad world, my masters. To get the supreme scoundrel always accurately the first hanged, — this, which presupposes that the supreme hero were always the first promoted, this were precisely the millennium itself, clear evidence that the millennium had come : alas, we must forbear hope of this. 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 every human law there must either exist such an aim, or else the law is not a human but a diabolic one. Diabolic, I say : no quantity of bombazine, or lawyers' wigs, three-readings, and solemn trumpeting and bow- wow-ing in high places or in low, can hide from me its frightful infernal tendency ; — bound, and sinking 108 MODEL TRISONS. at all moments, gradually to Gehenna, this -law;' and dragging down much with it!,' To decree injustice by a lain:'' inspired Prophets have long since seen, what every clear soul may still see, that of all Anar- chies and Devil-worships there is none like this; that this is the 'Throne of Iniquity ' set up in the name of the Highest, the human Apotheosis of Anarchy itself. " Quiet Anarchy," you exultingly say? Yes; quiet Anarchy, which the longer it sits ' quiet ' will have the frightfuller account to settle at last. For every doit of the account, as I often say, will have to be settled one day, as sure as God lives. Principal and compound interest rigorously computed ; and the interest is at a terrible rate per cent in these cases ! — Alas, the aspect of certain beatified Anarchies, sitting ' quiet ; ' and of others in a state of infernal explosion for sixty years back : this, the one view our Europe offers at present, makes these days very sad. — My unfortunate philanthropic friends, it is this long- continued oblivion of the soul of law that has reduced the Criminal Question to such a pass among us. Many other things have come, and are coming, for the same sad reason, 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 can parliament get through the Criminal Ques- tion? Parliament, oblivious of Heavenly Law, will find itself in hopeless reductio ad ahsurduni in regard to in- numerable other questions, — in regard to all questions whatsoever by ani by. There will be no existence MODEL PRISONS. 109 possible for Parliament on these current terms. Par- liament, in its lawmakings, must really try to attain some vision again of what Heaven's Laws are. A thing not easy to do ; a thing requiring sad sincerity of heart, reverence, pious earnestness, valiant manful wisdom ; — qualities not overabundant in Parliament just now, nor out of it, I fear. Adieu, my friends. My anger against you is gone ; my sad reflections on you, and on the depths to which you and I and all of us are simk in these strange times, are not to be uttered at present. You would have saved the Sarawak Pirates, then ? The Ahnighty Maker is wroth that the Sarawak cut- throats, with their poisoned spears, are away ? What must his wrath be that the Thirty-thousand Needle- women are still here, and the question of ' prevenient grace ' not yet settled ! O my friends, in sad earnest, sad and deadly earnest, there much needs that God would mend all 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 pretty well 'emancipated' now? My clear opinion farther is, we had better quit the Scoundrel-province of Reform ; better close that under hatches, in some rapid summary manner, and go elsewhither with our Reform eiforts. A whole world, for want of Reform, is drowning and sinking ; threatening to swamp itself into a Stygian quagmire, uninhabitable by any noble-minded man. Let us to the wellheads, I say ; to the chief fountains of these waters of bitterness ; and there strike home and dig ! To puddle in the 10 110 MODEL PRISONS. embouchures and drowned outskirts, and ulterior and ultimate issues and cloacas of the affair, what profit can there be in that ? Nothing to be saved there ; nothing to be fished-up there, except, with endless peril and spread of pestilence, a miscellany of broken v/aifs and dead dogs ! In the name of Heaven, quit that ! DOWNING STREET From all corners of the wide British Dominion there rises one complaint against the ineffectual it y of what are nicknamed onr 'redtape' establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial Office, Foreign Office, and the others, in Downing Street and the neighbor- hood. To me individually these branches of human business are little known ; but every British citizen and reflective passer-by has occasion to wonder much, and inquire earnestly, concerning them. To all men it is evident that the social interests of One hundred and fifty Millions of us depend on the mysterious industry there carried on ; and likewise that the dis- satisfaction with it is great, universal, and continually increasing in intensity, — in fact, mounting, we might say, to the pitch of settled despair. Every colony, every agent for a master colonial, has his tragic tale to tell you of his sad experiences in the Colonial Office ; what blind obstructions, fatal indolences, pedantries, stupidities, on the right and on the left, he had to do battle with ; what a world-wide jungle of redtape, inhabited by doleful creatures, deaf or nearly so to human reason or entreat}'', he had en- tered on ; and how he paused in amazement, almost 112 DOWNING STREET. in despair ; passionately appealed now to this doleful creature, now to that, and to the dead redtape jungle, and to the living Universe itself, and to tlie Voices and to the Silences ; — and on the whole fouud that it was an adventure, in sorrowful fact, equal to the fabulous ones by old knights-errant against dragons and wizards in enchanted wildernesses and waste howling solitudes ; not achievable except by nearly superhuman exercise of all the four cardinal virtues, and unexpected favor of the special blessing of Heaven. His adventure achieved or found unachieva- ble, he has returned with experiences new to him in the affairs of men. What this Colonial Office, inhab- iting the head of Downing Street, really loas^ and had to do, or try doing, in God's practical Earth, he could not by any means precisely get to know ,• be- lieves that it does not itself in the least precisely know. Believes that nobody knows ; that it is a mystery, a kiiid of Heathen myth ; and stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon ; for it practically presides over the destinies of many mil- lions of living men. Such is his report of the Colonial Office : and if we oftener hear such a report of that than vre do of the Home Office, Foreign Office or the rest, — the reason probably is, that Colonies excite more atten- tion at present, than any of our other interests. The Forty Colonies, it appears, are all pretty like rebelling jUst now ; and are to be pacified with constitutions ; luckier constitutions, let us hope, than some late ones have been. Loj^al Canada, for instance, had to quench a rebellion the other year ; and this year, in virtue of DOWNING STREET. 113 its constitution, it is called upon to pay the rebels their damages ; which surely is a rather surprising result, however constitutional ! — Men have rents and mou- eys dependent in the Colonies ! Emigration schemes, Black Emancipations, New Zealand and other schemes ; and feel and publish more emphatically what their Downing Street woes in these respects have been. Were the state of poor salloio English ploughers and weavers, wiiat we may call the Sallow or Yellow Emancipation interest, as much an object with Exe- ter-Hall Philanthropists, as that of the Black block- heads now all emancipated, and going at large with- out work, or need of working, in West India clover, (and fattening very mnch in it, one delights to hear,) — then perhaps the Home Office, its huge virtual task better understood, and its small actual perform- ance better seen into, might be found still more defi- cient, and behind the wants of the age, than the Colonial itself is. How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over held-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-discs and of metallic terror from said huge sword) to see how they will like it, — do from time to time astonish the world, in a not pleasant manner. Hercules-Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busy-Body : none of these are parts this Na- tion has a turn for : she, if you consulted her, would 10* 114 DOWNING STREET. ratlier 7iot i)lay these parts, but another ! Seizures of Sapienza. correspondences with Sotomayor, remon- strances to Otho King of Athens, fleets hanging by their anchor 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 to be,' — has sunk justly in public estimation to a very low figure. For in fact, it is reasonably asked. What vital in- terest has England in any cause now deciding itself in foreign parts ? Once there was a Papistry and Protestantism, important as life eternal and death eternal ; more lately there Avas an interest of Civil Order and Horrors of the French Revolution, impor- tant at least as rentroU and preservation of the game : but now what is there ? No cause in which any god or man of this British Nation can be thought to be concerned. Sham-kingship, now recognized and even self-recognized everywhere to be sham, wrestles and struggles with mere ballot-box Anarchy ; not a pleasant spectacle to British minds. Both parties in the wrestle professing earnest wishes of peace to us, what have we to do with it except answer earnestly, " Peace, yes certainly," and mind our aflairs else- where. The British Nation has no concern with that indispensable sorrowful and shameful wrestle now going on everywhere in foreign parts. The British Nation already, by self-experience centuries old, un- derstands all that ; was lucky enough to transact the greater part of that, in noble ancient ages, while the wrestle had not yet become a shameful one, but on I OWNING STREET. 115 hoth sides of it there was wisdom, virtue, heroic noble- iiess fnutful to all time, — thrice-hicky British Nation ! I'lie Biitish Nation, I say, has nothing to learn there ; iias now quite another set of lessons to learn, far ahead of Avhat is going on there. Sad example there, of what the issue is, and how inevitable and how immi- nent, might admonish the British Nation to be speedy with its new lessons ; to bestir itself, as men in peril of conflagration do, with the neighboring houses all on fire ! To obtain, for its own very pressing behoof, if by possibility it could, some real Captaincy instead of an imaginary one ; to remove resolutely, and re- place by a better sort, its own peculiar species of teaching and guiding histrios of various name, who here too are numerous exceedingly, and much in need of gentle removal, while the play is still good, and the comedy has not yet become tragic ; — and to be a little swift about it withal ; and so to escape the otherwise inevitable evil day ! This Britain might learn : but she does not need a protccoUing establish- ment, with much ' having the honor to be," to teach it her. No: — she has, in fact, certain cottons, hardwares and suchlike to sell in foreign parts, and certain wines, Portugal oranges, Baltic tar and other products to buy ; and does need, I suppose, some kind of Consul, or ac- credited agent, accessible to British voyagers, here and there, in the chief cities of the continent : through which functionary, or through the penny-post, if sjie had any sjjecific message to foreign courts, it would be easy and proper to transmit the same. Special message-carriers, to be still called Ambassadors, if the lio DOWNING STREET. name gratified them, could be sent when occasion great enough demanded ; not sent when it did not. But for all purposes of a resident ambassador, I hear ^lersons extensively and well acquainted among our foreign embassies at this date declare, That a well- selected Times reporter or ' own correspondent ' or- dered to reside in foreign capitals, and keep his eyes open, and (though sparingly) his pen going, would in reality be much more effective — and surely we see well, he would come a good deal cheaper ! Consid- erably cheaper in expense of money ; and in expense of falsity and grimacing hypocrisy, (of which no hu- man arithmetic can count the ultimate cost) incalcu- lably cheaper ! If this is the fact, why not treat it as such ? If this is so in any measure, we had better in that measure admit it to be so ! The time, I believe, has come for asking with considerable severity. How far it is so ? Nay there are men now current in polit- ical society, men of weight though also of wit, who have been heard to say, " That there was but one reform 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 the devouring ele- ment into neighboring houses, let that reform it ! In such 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 the street 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 ^ DOWNING STREET. 117 prevailing rumor, is the exoteric public conviction about these sublime establishments in Downing Street and the neighborhood, — the esoteric mysteries of which are indeed still held sacred by the initiated, but be- lieved by the world to be mere Dalai-Lama pills, man- ufactured let not refined lips hint how, and quite iin salvatory to mankind. Every one may remark what a hope animates the eyes of any circle, when it is re- ported or even confidently asserted, that Sir Robert Peel has in his mind privately resolved to go, one day, into that stable of King Augis, which appals human hearts, so rich is it, high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years ; and Hercules-like to load a thou- sand night-wagons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement, and real basis of the matter show itself clean again ! In any intelligent circle such a rumor, like the first break of day to men in dark- ness, enlightens all eyes; and each says devoutly, ^^^axitis, O ye righteous Powers that have pity on us! All England grateful, with kindling looks, will rise in the rear of him, and from its deepest heart bid him good speed ! " For it is universally felt that some esotei^ic man well acquainted with the mysteries and properties good and evil of the administrative stable, is the fittest to reform it, nay can alone reform it otherwise than 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 possible man to reform it. And secondly it is felt that 'reform' in that Downing Street de- partment of affairs is precisely the reform which were 118 DOWNING STREET. worth all others; that those administrative establish- ments in Downing Street are really the Government of this huge nngoverned Empire; that to clean out the dead pedantries, unveracities, indolent somnolent impotencies, and accumulated dung-mountains there, is the beginning of all nractical good whatsoever. Yes, get down once again lo the actual pavement of that ; ascertain what the thing is, and was before dung ac- cumulated in it ; and Avhat it should and may, and must for the life's sake of this Empire, henceforth be- come : here clearly lies the heart of the whole matter. Political reform, if this be not reformed, is nought and a mere mockery. What England wants, and Avill require to have, or sink in nameless anarchies, is not a Reformed Parlia- ment, meaning thereby a Parliament elected accord- ing to the six or the four or any other number of 'points' and cunningly-devised improvements in hustings mechanism, but a Reformed Executive or Sovereign Body of Rulers and Administrators, — some improved method, innumerable improvements in our poor blind methods, of getting hold of these. Not a better Talking-Apparatus, the best conceivable Talking-Apparatus would do very little for us at pres- ent ; — but an infinitely better Acting-Apparatus, the benefits of which would be invaluable now and henceforth. The practical question puts itself with ever-increasing stringency to all English minds: Can wc, by no industry, energy, utmost expenditure of human ingenuity, and passionate invocation of the Heavens and the Earth, get to attain some twelve or ten or six men to manaQ:e the affairs of this Nation in DOWNING STREET. 119 Downing Street, and the chief posts elsewhere, who are abler for the work than those we have been used to, this long while ? P^r it is really a heroic work, and cannot be done by histrios, and dexterous talkers having the honor to be : it is a heavy and appalling work; and, at tiie starting of it especially, will require Herculean men ; such mountains of pedant exiivicE and obscene owl-droppings have accumulated in those regions, long the habitation of doleful crea- tures ; the old jmvemeitfs^ the natural facts and real essential functions of those establishments, have not been seen by eyes for these two-hundred years last past ! Herculean men acquainted with the virtues of running water, and with .the divine necessity of getting down to the clear pavements and old veraci- ties ; who tremble before no amount of pedant exuvias, no loudest shrieking of doleful creatures ; who trem- ble only to live, themselves, like inane phantasms, and to leave their life as a paltry contribution to the guano mountains, and not as a divine eternal protest against them ! These are the kind of men we want ; these, the nearest possible approximation to these, are the men we must find and have, or go bankrupt altogether, for the concern as it is will evidently not hold long together. How true is this of Crabbe : " Men sit in parliament eighty-three hours per week, debat- ing about many things. Men sit in Downing Street, doing protocols, Syrian treaties, Greek questions, Por- tuguese, Spanish, French, Egyptian and Ethiopian questions ; dexterously writing despatches, and hav- ing the honor to be. Not a question -of them is at all 120 DOWNING STREET. pressing in comparison with the English question, Pacifico the nriiracnlous Gibraltar Jew has been hus- tled by some populace in Greece ; upon him let the British Lion drop, very rapidly indeed, a constitu- tional tear. Radetzky is said to be advancing upon Milan ; — I am sorry to hear it, and perhaps it does deserve a despatch, or friendly letter, once and away : but the Irish Giant, named of Despair, is advancing upon London itself, layino^ waste all English cities, towns and villages ; that is the interesting Govern- ment-despatch of the day ! I notice him in Piccadilly ; blue-visaged, thatched in rags, a blue child on each arm ; hunger-driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom he may devour : he, missioned by the just Heavens, too truly and too sadly their 'divine missionary' come at last in this authoritative manner, will throw us all into Doubting Castle, I perceive ! That is the phenomenon worth protocoUing about, and writing despatches upon, and thinking of with all one's fac- ulty day and night, if one wishes to have the honor to be — any thing but a Phantasm Governor of Eng- land just now ! I entreat your Lordship's all but undivided attention to that domestic L'ish Giant, named of Despair, for a great many years to come. Prophecy of him there has long been ; bnt now by the rot of the potato (blessed be the just gods, who send us either swift death or some beginning of cure at last !) he is here in person, and there is no denying him, or disregarding him any more ; and woe to the public watchman that ignores kim, and sees Pacifico the Gibraltar Jew instead ? " DOWXIXG STREET. 121 What these strange Entities in Downing Street intrinsically are ; who made them, why they were made ; how they do their function ; and what tlieir function, so huge in appearance, may in net result amount to, — is probably known to no mortal. The unofficial mind passes by in dark wonder; not pre- tending to know. Tlie official mind must not blab ; — the official mind, restricted to its own square foot of territory in the vast labyrinth, is probably itself dark, and unable to blab. We see the outcome ; the mechanism we do not see. How the tailors clip and sew, in that sublime sweating establishment of theirs, we know not : that the coat they bring us out is the sorrowfullest fantastic mockery of a coat, a mere intricate artistic network of traditions and formalities, an embroiled reticulation made of web-listings, and superannuated thrums and tatters, 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 Offices whatever. Firstj that the work, such as it may be, is ill done in these establishments. That it is delayed, neglected, slurred over, committed to hands that cannot do it well ; that, in a word, the questions sent tliither are not wisely handled, but unwisely ; not decided truly and rapidly, but with delays and wrong at last: which is the principal character, and the infallible result, of an insufficient Intellect being set to decide them. Or second^ what is still fataller, the work done there may itself be qu'te the wronor kind of work. Not the 11 J22 DOWNING STREET. kind of supervision and direction which Colonics, and other such interests, Home or Foreign, do by the nature of them require from the Central Government ; not that, but a quite other kind ! The Sotomayor correspondence, for example, is considered by many persons not to be mismanaged merely, but to be a tiling which should never have been managed at all ; a quite superfluous concern, which and the like of which the British Government has almost no call to get into, at this new epoch of time. And not Soto- mayor only, nor Sapienza only, in regard to that For- eign Office, but innumerable other things, if our witty friend of the ' live coal ' have reason in him ! Of the Colonial Office, too, it is urged that the ques- tions they decide and operate upon are, in very great part, questions which they never should have med- dled with, but almost all of which should have been decided in the Colonies themselves, — Mother Coun- try or Colonial Office reserving its energy for a quite other class of objects, which are terribly neglected just now. These are the two vices that beset Government Offices ; both of them originating in insufficient Intellect, — that sad insufficiency from which, di- rectly or indirectly, all evil whatsoever springs ! And these two vices act and react, so that where the one is, the other is sure to be ; and each encouraging the growth of the other, both (if some cleaning of the Augis stable have not intervened for a long while) will be found in frightful development. You cannot have your work well done, if the work be not of a right kind, if it be not work prescribed by the law DOWNING STREET. 123 of Nature as well as by the rules of the otfice. Lazi- ness, which lies in wait round all human labor- offices, will in that case infallibly leak in, and vitiate the doing of the work. The work is bat idle ; if the doing 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 say nothing, is that your work be got to pass ; if the work itself is worth nothing, or little or an uncertain quantity, what more can gods or men require of it, or above all can I who am the doer of it require, but that it be got to pass ? And now enters another fatal effect, the mother of ever-new mischiefs, which renders Avell-doing or improvement impossible, and drives bad every where continually into worse. The work being what we see, a stupid subaltern will do as well as a gifted one ; the essential point is, that he 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 intel- ligence even dangerous ? I want no mettled Arab horse, with his flashing glances, arched neck and elastic step, to draw my wretched sand-cart through the streets ; a broken grassfed galloway, Irish garron, or painful ass with nothing in the belly of him but patience and furze, will do it safelier for me, if more slowly. Nay I myself, am I the worse for being of a feeble order of intelligence ; what the irreverent specnlative world calls barren, redtapish, limited, and even intrinsically dark and small, and if it must be said, stupid ? — To such a climax does it come in all Government and other Offices, where Human Stupid- ity has once introduced itself (as it will everywhere 124 'DOWNING STREET. do,) and no Scavenger God intervenes. The work, at first of some worth, is ill done, and becomes of less Avorth and of ever less, and finally of none ; the worthless work can now afford to be ill done ; and Hnman Stnpidity, at a double geometrical ratio, with frightful expansion grows and accumulates, — towards the unendurable. The reforming Hercules, Sir Robert Peel or who- ever he is to be, that enters Downing Street, will ask himself this question first of all, What work is now necessary, not in form and by traditionary use and wont, but in very fact, for the vital interests of the British Nation, to be done here ? The second ques- tion. How to get it well done, and to keep the best hands doing it well, will be greatly simplified by a good answer to that. Oh for an eye that could see in those hideous mazes, and a heart that could dare and do ! Strenuous faithful scrutiny, not of what is Ihoiight to be what in the redtape regions, but of what really is what in the realms of Fact and Nature her- self; deep-seeing, wise and courageous eyes, that could look through innumerable cobweb veils, and de- tect what fact or no-fact lies at heart of them, — how invaluable these ! For, alas, it is long since such eyes were much in the habit of looking steadfastly at any department of our affairs ; and poor commonplace creatures, helping themselves along, in the way of makeshift, from year to year, in such an element, do wonderful works indeed. Such creatures, like moles, are safe only underground, and their engineerings there become very dasdalean. In fact, such unfortu- nate persons have no resource but to become what we DOWNING STREET. 125 call Pedants ; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions ; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense as very extraneons to them and tlieir procedure ; by long persistence in which course they become Completed Pedants, hide-bonnd, impenetrable, able to defy the hostile extraneons element : an alarming kind of men. Such men, left to themselves for a century or two, in any Colonial, Foreign, or other Office, will make a terrible affair of it ! For the one enemy we have in this Universe is Stu- pidity, Darkness of Mind ; of whLch darkness, again, there are many sources, every sin a source, and prob- ably self-conceit the chief source. Darkness of mind, in every kind and variety, does to a really tragic ex- tent abound : but of all the kinds of darkness, surely the Pedant darkness, which asserts and believes itself to be ligJU^ is the most formidable to mankind ! For empires or for individuals there is but one class of men to be trembled at ; and that is the Stupid Class, the class that cannot see, who alas are they mainly that will not see. A class of mortals under which as ad- njinistrators, kings, priests, diplomatists, &c., the in- terests of mankind in every European country have sunk overloaded, as under universal nightmare, near to extinction ; and indeed are at this moment convul- sively writhing, decided either to throw off the un- blessed superincumbent nightmare, or roll themselves and it to the Abyss. Vain to reform Parliament, to invent ballot-boxes, to reform this or that ; the real Administration, practical Management of the Com- monwealthj goes all awry ; choked up with long ac- 11* J26 DOWNING STREET. ciimnlaled pedantrieSj so that your appointed workers have been reduced to work as moles ; and it is one vast boring and connterboring, on the part of eyeless persons irreverently called stupid ; and a dajdalean bewilderment, writing ' impossible ' on all efforts or proposals, supervenes. The State itself, not in Downing Street alone but in every department of it, has altered much from what it was in past times; and it will again have to alter very much, to alter I think from top to bottom, if it means 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 helping itself over the difficulty of the hour, has become, instead of a luminous vital- ity permeating with its light all provinces of our affairs, a most monstrous agglomerate of inanities, as little adapted for the actual wants of a modern com- munity as the worst citizen need wish. The thing it is doing is by no means the thing we want to have done. What we want ! Let the dullest British man endeavor to raise in his mind this question, and ask himself in sincerity what the British Nation wants at this time. Is it to have, with endless jargoning, de- bating, motioning and counter-motioning, a settlement effected between the Honorable Mr. This and the Honorable Mr. That, as to their respective pretensions to ride the high horse? Really it is unimportant which of them ride it. Going upon past experience DOWNING STREET. 127 long continued now, I should say with brevity, "Either of them — Neither of them." If our Gov- ernment is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it ? Fling an 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 bladders to his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded pole in his hands ; and will, v/ith straddling painful gestures, float hither and thither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while, as well as his fore- goers did, till he also capsize, and be left floating feet uppermost ; after which you choose another. What an immense pother, by parlianienting and palavering in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that ! I say, if that is the func- tion, almost any human creature can learn to dis- charge it : fling out your orange-skin again ; and save an incalculable labor, and an emission of nonsense and falsity, and electioneering beer and bribery and balderdash, which is terrible to think of, in deciding. Your National Parliament, in so far as it has only that question to decide, may be considered as an enormous National Palaver, existing mainly for imaginary pur- poses ; and certain, in these days of abbreviated labor, to get itself sent home again to its partridge-shootings, fox-huntings, — and, above all, to its rat-catchings, if it could but understand the time of day, and know (as our indignant Crabbe remarks) that 'the real Nimrod of this era, who alone does any good to the era, is the rat-catcher.' 128 DOWNING STREET. The notion that any Government is or can be a No-Government, without the deadliest peril to all noble interests of the Commonwealth, and by degrees slower or swifter to all ignoble ones also, and to the very gullydrains, and thief lodginghonses, and Mosaic sweating establishments, and at last without destruc- tion to such No-Government itself, — was never my notion ; and I hope it will soon cease altogether to be the world's or to be anybody's. But if it be tha correct notion, as the world seems at present to flatter itself, I point out improvements and abbreviations. Dismiss your National Palaver ; make the Times Newspaper your National Palaver, which needs no beer-barrels or hustings, and is cheaper in expense of money and of falsity a thousand and a million fold ; have an economical redtape drilling establishment (it were easier to devise such a thing than a right Mod- ern University) ; — and fling out your orange-skin among the graduates, when you want a new Premier. A mighty question indeed! Who shall be Premier, and take in hand the ' rudder of government,' other- wise called the ' spigot of taxation ;' shall it be the Honorable Felix Parvulus, or the Right Honorable Felicissimus Zero ? By our electioneerings and Han- sard Debatings, and ever-enduring tempest of jargon that goes on everywhere, we manage to settle that ; to have it declared, with no bloodshed except insig- nificant blood from the nose in hustings-time, but with immense beershed and inkshed and explosion of non- sense, which darkens all the air, that the Right Hon- orable Zero is to be the man. That we firmly set- tle ; Zero, all shivering with rapture and with terror, DOWNING STUEET. 129 mounts into the high saddle ; cramps himself on, with knees, heels, hands and feet ; and the horse gallops — whither it lists. That the Right Honorcible Zero shonld attempt controlling the horse — Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too happy if the horse will only gallop anywhither, and not throw him. Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, is not in the head of Felicissimus ; except, if he could but devise it, some measure that would please his horse for the moment, and encourage him to go with softer paces, god ward or devil ward as it might be, and save Felicissimus's leather, which is fast wearing. This is what we'call a Government in England, for nearly two centuries now. I wish Felicissimus were saddle-sick forever and a day! He is a dreadful object, however much we are used to him. If the horse had not been bred and broken in, for a thousand years, by real riders and horse-subduers, perhaps the best and bravest the world ever saw, what would have become of Felicissimus and him long since? This horse, by second-nature, religiously respects all fences; gallops, if nev^er so madly, on the highways alone ; — seems to me, of late, like a desperate Sleswick thunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the labyrinthic lanes of a woody flat country ; passionate to reach his goal ; unable to reach it, because in the flat leafy lanes there is no outlook whatever, and in the bridle there is no guidance whatever. So he gallops stormfully along, thinking it is forward and forward; and alas, it is only round and round, out of one old lane into the other; — nay (according to some) 'he mistakes Ids 130 DOWNING STREET. own footprints^ which of course grow ever more numerous, for the sign of a more and more frequented road;' and his despair is hourly increasing. My impression is, he is certain soon, such is the growth of his necessity and his despair, to — pkmge across the fence, into an opener survey of the country ; and to sweep FeHcissimus off his hack, and comb liim away very tragically in the process! Poor Sleswicker, I wish you were better ridden. I perceive it lies in the Fates you must now either be better ridden, or else not long at all. This plunging in the heavy labyrinth of overshaded lanes, with one's stomach getting empty, one's Ireland falling into cannibalism, and no vestige of a goal either visible or possible, cannot last. Colonial Offices, Foreign, Home and other Offices, got together under these strange circumstances, cannot well be expected to be the best that human ingenuity could devise ; the wonder rather is to see them so good as they are. Who made them, ask me not. Made they clearly were ; for we see them here in a concrete condition, writing despatches, and drawing salary with a view to buy pudding. But how those Offices in Downing Street were made ; who made them, or for what kind of objects they were made, would be hard to say at present. ,Dim visions and phantasmagories gathered from the Books of Horace Walpole, Memoirs of Bubb Doddington, Memoirs of my Lady Sundon, Lord Fanny Hervey, and innu- merable others, rise on us, beckoning fantastically towards, not an answer, but some conceivable intinia- DOWNING STREET. 131 tions of an answer ; and proclaiming very legibly the old text ' Quani parvd sapientid,' in respect of this hard-working, much-snbduing British Nation ; — giv- ing rise to endless reflections in a thinking English- man of this day. Alas, it is ever so : each generation has its task, and does it belter or worse, — greatly neglecting what is not immediately its task. Our poor grandfathers, so busy conquering Indias, found- ing Colonies, inventing spinning-jennies, kindling Lancashires and Bromwichams, took no thouglii about the government of all that; left it all to be governed by Lord Fanny and the Hanover Succes- sion, or how the gods pleased. And now we the poor grandchildren find that it will not stick together on these terms any longer ; that our sad, dangerous and sore task is to discover some government for this big world which has been conquered to us ; that the red- tape Offices in Downing Street are near the end of their rope ; that if we can get nothing better, in the way of government, it is all over with our world and us.' How the Downing Street Offices originated, and what the meaning of them was or is, let Dryasdust, when in some lucid moment the whim takes him, instruct us. Enough for us to know and see clearly, with urgent practical inference derived from such insight. That they were not made for us or for our objects at all ; that the devouring Irish Giant is here, and that he cannot be fed with redtape, and will eat us if we cannot feed him. On the whole, let us say Felicissimus made them ; — or rather it was the predecessors of Felicissimus, who were not so dreadfully hunted, sticking to the 132 DOWiN'ING STREET. wild and ever more desperate Sleswicker in the leafy- labyrinth of lanes, as he now is. He, I think, will never make any thing ; bnt be combed off by the elm-boughs, and left sprawling in the ditch. Bat in past time, this and the other heavy-laden redtape sonl had withal a glow of patriotism in him ; now and then, in his whirling element, a gleam of human in- genuity, some eye towards business that must be done. At all events, for him and every one, Parlia- ment needed to be persuaded that business was done. By the contributions of many such heavy-laden souls, driven on by necessity outward and inward, these singular Establishments are here. Contributions — who knows how far baok they go, far beyond the reign of George the Second, or perhaps the reign of William Conqueror. Noble and genuine some of them were, many of them were, I need not doubt : for there is no human edifice that stands long but has got itself planted, here and there, upon the basis of fact; and been built, in many respects, according to the laws of statics: no standing edifice, especially no edifice of State, but has had the wise and brave at work in it, contributing their lives to it ; and is 'ce- mented,' whether it know the fact or not, ' by the blood of heroes ! ' None ; not even the Foreign Of- fice, Home Office, still less the National Palaver itself William Conqueror, I find, must have had a first-rate Home Office, for his share. The Domesday Book, done in four years, and done as it is, with such an admirable brevity, explicitness and completeness, tes- tifies emphatically what kind of under-secretaries and officials William had. Silent officials and secretaries, DOWNING STREET. 133 I suppose ; not wasting themselves in parliamentary talk ; reserving all their intelligence for silent survey of the huge dumb fact, silent consideration how they inigiit compass the mastery of that. Happy secreta- ries, happy William ! But indeed nobody knows what inarticulate tradi- tions, remnants of old wisdom, priceless thougli quite anonymous, survive in many modern things that still Iiave life in them. Ben Brace, with his taciturnities, and rugged stoical ways, with his tarry breeches, stiff as plank-breeches, I perceive is still a kind of Lod- ^roo- (Loaded breeks) in more senses than one ; and derives, little conscious of it, many of his excellences from the old Seakings and Saxon Pirates themselves; and how many Blakes and Nelsons since have contrib- uted to Ben ! " Things are not so false always as they seem," said a certain Professor to me once : " of this you will find instances in every country, and in your England more than any — and I hope will draw les- sons from them. An English Seventy-four, if you look merely at the articulate law and methods of it, is one of the impossiblest entities. The captain is appointed not by preeminent merit in sailorship, but by parliamentary connection ; the men " (this was spoken some years ago) "are got by impressment ; a press-gang goes out, knocks men down on the streets of sea-towns, and drags them on board — if the ship were to be stranded I have heard they would nearly all run ashore and desert. Can any thing be more unreasonable than a Seventy-four? Articulately al- most nothing. But it has inarticulate traditions, ancient methods and habitudes in it, stoicisms, noblt* 12 134 DOWNING STREET. nesses, true rules both of sailing and of conduct ; enough to keep it afloat on Nature's vertical bosom, after ail. See ; if you bid it sail to the end of the •world, it will lift anchor, go, and arrive. The raging oceans do not beat it back ; it too, as well as the raging oceans, has a relationship to Nature, and it does not sink, but under the due conditions is borne along. If it meet with hurricanes, it rides them out; if it meet an Enemy's ship, it shivers it to powder ; and in short, it holds on its way, and to a wonderful extent does what it means and pretends to do. As- sure yourself, my friend, there is an immense fund of truth somewhere or 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 are to be got mended ! Truly an immense problem, inclusive of all others whatsoever; which demands to be attacked, and incessantly persisted in, by all good citizens, as the grand problem of Society, and the one thing needful for the Commonwealth ! A problem in which all men, with all their wisdoms and all their virtues, faithfully and continually cooperating at it, will never have done enough, and will still only be struggling toicards perfection in it. In which some men can do much; — in which every man can do something. Every man, and thou my present Reader canst do this : Be thyself a man abler to be governed ; more reverencing the divine faculty of governing, more DOWNING STREET. 135 sacredly detesting the diabolical semblance of said fiiculty in self and others ; so shalt thou, if not gov- ern, 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 serious- ness altogether of a religious nature, that as " Human Stupidity " is verily the accursed parent of all this mis- cliief, so Human Intelligence alone, to which and to which only is victory and blessedness appointed here below, will or can cure it. If we knew this as de- voutly as we ought to do, the evil, and all other evils were curable ; —alas, 'if we had from of old known this, as all men made in God's image ought to do, the evil never would have been ! Perhaps few Na- tions have ever known it less than we, for a good while back, have done. Hence these sorrows. What a People are the poor Thibet idolaters, com- pared with us and our 'religions,' which issue in the worship of King Hudson as our Dalai-Lama ! They, across such hulls of abject ignorance, have seen into the heart of the matter; we, witji our torches of knowledge everywhere brandishing them- selves, and such a human enlightenment as never was before, have quite missed it. Reverence for Human Worth, earnest devout search for it and en- couragement of it, loyal furtherance and obedience to it ; this, I say, is the out-come and essence of all true ' r'eligions,' and was, and ever will be. We have not known this. No ; loud as our tongues sometimes go in that direction, we have no true reverence for Human Intelligence, for Human Worth and Wisdom : none, or too little, —and I pray for a restoration of |36 DOWNING STREET. such reverence, as for the change from Stygian dark- ness to Heavenly light, as for the return of life to poor sick moribund Society and all its interests. Hu- man intelligence means little for most of us but Beaver Contrivance, which produces 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 object of reverence, and of devout prayer, and zealous wish and pursuit, among the sons of men ; and even, well understood, the one object. It is the Inspiration of the Almighty that giveth men under- standing. For it must be repeated, and ever again repeated till poor mortals get to discern it, and awake from their baleful paralysis, and degradation under foul enchantments, That a man of Intellect, of real and not sham Intellect, is by the nature of him like- wise inevitably a man of nobleness, a man of courage, rectitude, pious strength ; who, even because he is and has been loyal to the Laws of this Universe, is initiated into disceniinent of the same : to this hour a Missioned of Heaven ; whom if men follow, it will be well with them ; whom if men do not follow, it will not be well. Human Intellect, if you considei it well, is the exact summary of Human Worth ; and the essence of all worth-ships and worships is rever- ence for that same. This much surprises you, friend Peter ; but I assure you it is the fact ; — and I would advise you to consider it, and to try if you too do not gradually find it so. With me it has long been an article, not of 'faith' only, but of settled insight, of conviction as to what the ordanments of the DOWNING STREET. 137 Maker in this Universe are. Ah, conld you and the rest of us but get to know it, and everywhere reli- giously act upon it, — as our Fortietli Article, wliich uicludes all the other Thirty-nine, and without which the Thirty-nine are good for almost nothing, — there might then be some hope for us ! In tliis world there is but one appalling creature : the Stupid man con- sidered to be the Missioned of Heaven, and followed by men. He is our King, men say, he; — and they follow him, through straight or winding courses, I for one know well whitherward. Abler men in Downing Street, abler men to govern us: yes, that, sure enongh, would gradually remove the dung-mountains, however high they are ; that would be the way, nor is there any other way, to remedy whatsoever has gone wrong in Downing Street and in the wide regions, spiritual and temporal, which Downing Street presides over ! For the Able Man, meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of Falsity and Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order ; into what absurdest ele- ment soever you put him, he is there to make it a little less absurd, to fight continually with it till it become a little sane and human again. Peace on other terms he, for his part, cannot make with it ; not he, while he continues able, or possessed of real intel- lect and not imaginary. There is but one man fraught with blessings for this world, fated to dimin- ish and successively abolish the curses of the world ; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and follow ; know that to find him or miss him, means victory or defeat f^r you, in all Downing Streets, and 12* 138 DOWNING STREET. establishments and enterprises here below. I leave your Lordship to judge whether this has been our practice hitherto ; and would humbly inquire what your Lordship thinks is liliely to be the conse- quence of continuing to neglect this ? It ought to have been our practice ; ought, in all places and all times, to be the practice in this world ; so says the fixed law of things forevermore : — and it must cease to be not the practice, your Lordship ; and cannot too speedily do so, I think ! — Much has been done in the way of reforming Par- liament in late years ; but that of itself seems to avail nothing, or almost less. The men that sit in Down- ing Street, governing us, are not abler men since the Reform Bill than were those before it. Precisely the same kind of men ; obedient formerly to Tory tradi- tions, obedient now to Whig ditto and popular clam- ors. Respectable men of office: respectably com- monplace in faculty, — while the situation is becoming terribly original ! Rendering their outlooks, and ours, more ominous every day. Indisputably enough the meaning of all reform- movement, electing and electioneering, of popular agi- tation, parliamentary eloquence, and all political effort whatsoever, is that you may get the ten Ablest Men in England put to preside over your ten principal de- partments of affairs. To sift and riddle the Nation, so that you might extricate and sift out the true ten gold grains, or ablest men, and of these make your Governors or Public Officers ; leaving the dross and common sandy or silty materials safely aside, as the DOWNING STREET. 139 thing to be governed, not to govern : certainly all ballotboxes, caucuses, Kennington-Common meetings, Parliamentary debatings. Red Republics, Russian Despotisms, and constitutional or nnconstitutional metliods of society among mankind, are intended 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 men you have got are actually the ablest, then rejoice ; with whatever astonishment, ac- cept your Ten, and thank the gods, under this Ten your destruction will at least be milder than under another. But if you have 7iot got them, if you are very far from having got them, then do not rejoice at all, then lament very much ; then admit that your sublime political constitutions and contrivances do not prove themselves sublime, but ridiculous and con- temptible ; that your world's-wonder of a political mill, the envy of surrounding nations, does not yield you real meal ; yields you only powder of millstones (called Hansard Debatings), and a detestable brown substance not unlike the grindings of dried horse- dung or prepared street-mud, which though sold under royal patent, and much recommended by the trade, is quite unfit for culinary purposes ! — But the disease at least is not mysterious, what- ever the remedy be. Our disease, — alas, is it not clear as the sun, that we suffer under what is the disease of all the miserable in this world, ivant of wis- dom ; that in the Head there is no vision, and that tliereby all the members are dark and in bonds? No vision in the head ; heroism, faith, devout insight to 140 DOWNING STREET. discern what is needful, noble courage to do it, greatly defective there : not seeing eyes there, but spectacles constitutionally ground, which, to the unwary, seem to see. A quite fatal circumstance, had you never so many Parliaments ! How is your ship to be steered by a Pilot with no eyes but a pair of glass ones got from the constitutional optician? He must' steer by the ear, I think, rather than by the eye ; by the shoutings he catches from the shore, or from the Par- liamentary benches nearer hand: — one of the fright- fullest objects to see steering in a difficult sea! Re- formed 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 the limbs that are in bonds, that are all in dark misery till the head be delivered, till the pressure on the brain be removed. Or perhaps there is now no heroic wisdom left in England ; England, once the land of heroes, is itself sunk now to a dim owlery, and habitation of doleful creatures, intent only on money-making and other forms of catching mice, for whom the proper gospel is the Gospel of M'Crowdy, and all nobler impulses and insights are forbidden henceforth ? Perhaps these present agreeable Occupants of Downing Street, such as the parliamentary mill has yielded them, are the best the miserable soil had grown ? The most Her- culean Ten Men that could be found among the Eng- lish Twenty-seven Millions, are these ? There are not, in any place, under any figure, ten diviner men among us? Well; in that case, the riddling and searching of the twenty-seven millions has been suC" rOWNING STREET. 141 cessful. Here are our ten divinest men ; with these, unhappily not divine enough, we must even content ourselves and die in peace, what help is there ? No help, no hope, in that case. But, again, if these are not our divinest men, then evidently there always is hope, there always is possi- bility of help; and ruin never is quite inevitable, till we have sifted out our actually divinest ten, and set these to try their hand at governing ! — That this has been achieved ; that these ten men are the most Her- culean souls the English population 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 proposi- tion is the fact. Ten much diviner men do certainly exist. By some conceivable, not forever impossible, method and methods, ten very much diviner men could be sifted out! — Courage; let us fix our eyes on that important fact, and strive all thitherward as towards a door of hope ! Parliaments, I think, have proved too well, in late years, that they are not the remedy. It is not Par- liaments, reformed or other, that will ever send Her- culean men to Downing Street, to reform Downing Street for us ; to diffuse therefrom a light of Heaveiily Order, instead of the murk of Stygian Anarchy, over this sad world of ours. That function does not lie in the capacities of Parliament. That is the function of a King, — if we could get such a priceless entity, Avhich we cannot just now! Failing which, States- men, or Temporary-Kings, and at the very lowest one 142 DOWNING STREET. real Statesman, to shape the dim tendencies of Par- liament, and guide them wisely to the goal : he, 1 perceive, will be a primary condition, indispensable for any progress whatsoever. One such, perhaps, might be attained ; one such might prove discoverable among our Parliamentary populations ? That one, in such an enterprise as this of Downing Street, might be invaluable ! One noble man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experi- ence ; one Intellect still really human, and not red- tapish, owlish and pcdantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command ; to brandish Her- cules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, ^' Here shall be truth, and real work, and talent to do it henceforth ; I will seek for able men to work here, as for the elixir of life to this poor place and me : " — what might not one such man effect there ! Nay one such is not to be dispensed with any- where in the affairs of men. In every ship, I say, there must be a seeiftg pilot, not a mere hearing one ! It is evident you can never get your ship steered through the difhcult straits by persons standing ashore, on this bank and that, and shouting their confused directions to you : *' Ware that Colonial Sand-bank ! — Starboard now, the Nigger Question ! — Larboard, lar^owrr/, the Suffrage Movement! — Financial Re- form, your Clothing-Colonels overboard ! The Qual- ification Movement, 'Ware-re-re ! — Helm-a-lee ! Bear a hand there, will you ! Hr-r-r, lubbers, imbeciles, fitter for a tailor's shopboard than a helm of Govern- DOWNING STREET. 1 i3 luent, Hr-r-r ! " — And so the ship wriggles and tum- bles, and on the whole goes as wind and current drive. No ship was ever steered except to destruction in that manner. I deliberately say so : no ship of a State either. If you cannot get a real pilot on board, 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 banks that ever was, will not, and by the nature of things cannot. Nay your pilot will have to succeed, if he do succeed, very much in spite of said bellowing ; he will hear all that, and regard very little of it, — in a patent mild-spoken wise manner, will regard allof «7 as what it is. And I never doubt but there is in Parliament itself, in spite of its vague palaverings which fill us with despair in these times, a dumb instinct of inarticulate sense and stubborn practical English insight ana veracity, that would manfully support a Statesman who could take command with really manful notions of Reform, and as one deserving to be obeyed. Oh for one such ; even one ! More precious to us than all the bullion in the Bank, or perhaps that ever was in it, just now ! For it is Wisdom alone that can recognize wisdom : Folly or Imbecility never can ; and that is the fatal- lest ban it labors under, dooming it to perpetual fail- ure in all things. Failure which, in Downing Street and places of command^ is especially accursed ; curs- ing not one but hundreds of millions ! Who is there that can recognize real intellect, and do reverence to it ; and discriminate it well from sham intellect which is so much more abuudaut, and deserves the 144 DOWNING STREET. reverse of reverence ? He that himself has it ! — One really human Intellect, invested with command, and charged to reform Downing Street for ns, would continually attract real intellect to those regions, and with a divine magnetism search it out from the modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession of intellect to Downing Street would hring to it benefit only, and would increase such divine at- traction in it, the parent of all benefit there and else- where ! '' What method, then ; by what method ? " ask many. — Method, alas ! To secure an increased supply of Human Intellect to Downing Street, there will evidently be no quite effectual 'method' but that of increasing the supply of Human Intellect, otherwise definable as Human Worth, in Society, generally ; increasing the supply of sacred rever- ence for it, of loyalty to it, and of life-and-death desire and pursuit of it, among all classes, — if we but knew such a ' method ! ' Alas, that were sim- ply the method of making all classes Servants of Heaven ;. and except it be devout prayer to Heaven, I have never heard of any method ! To increase the reverence for Human Intellect or God's Light, and the detestation of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness, what method is there? No method,— except even this, that we should each of us 'pray' for it, instead of praying for mere scrip and the like ; that Heaven would please to vouchsafe us each ? little of it, one by one ! As perhaps Heaven, in DOWNING STREET. 145 its infinite bounty, by stern methods, gradually will ? Perhaps Heaven has mercy too in these sore plagues that are oppressing us : and means to teach us rev- erence for Heroism and Human Intellect, by such baleful experience of what issue Imbecility and Par- liamentary Eloquence lead to ? Such reverence, I do hope, and even discover and observe, is silently yet extensively going on among us even in these sad years. In which small salutary fact there burns for us, in this black coil of universal baseness fast becoming universal wretchedness, an inextinguisha- ble hope ; far-ofl' but sure, a divine '■ pillar of fire by night.' Courage, courage! — Meanwhile, that our one reforming Statesman may have free command of what Intellect there is among us, and room to try all means for awakening and in- viting ever more of it, there has one small Project of Improvement been suggested ; which finds a certain dea:ree of favor wherever I hear it talked of, and which seems to merit much more consideration than it has yet received. Practical men themselves ap- prove of it hitherto, so far as it goes ; the one objec- tion being that the world is not yet prepared to insist on it, — which of course the world can never be, till once the world consider it, and in the first place hear tell of it ! I have, for my own part, a good opinion of this project. The old unreformed Parliament of rotten boroughs had cue advantage ; but that is here- by, in a far more fruitful and effectual manner, secured to the new. The Proposal is, That Secretaries under and upper, 13 148 DOWNING STREET. that all manner of chargeable or permanent servants in the Government Offices shall be selected imutout reference to their power of getting into Parliament ; — that, in short, the dueen shall have power of nom- iiiating the half-dozen or half-score Officers of the Administration, whose presence is thought necessary in Parliament, to official seats there, withont refer- ence to any constituency but her own only, which of course will mean her Prinie Minister's. A very small encroac^iment on the present constitution of Parliament; offering the minim.um of change in pres- ent methods, and I almost think a maximum in results to be derived therefrom. The Q^ueen nominates John Thomas (the fittest man she, much-inquiring, can hear tell of in her three kingdoms) Presi4ent of the Poor-Law Board, Under Secretary of the Colonies, Under or perhaps even Upper Secretary of what she and her Premier find suitablest tor a ^vorking head so eminent, a talent so precious ; and grants him by her direct authority, seat and vote in Parliament s6 long as he holds that office. Upper Secretaries, having more to do in Parliament, and being so bound to be in favor there, would, I suppose, at least till new times and habits come, be expected to be chosen from among the People's Members as at present. But whether the Prime Minister himself is, in all limes, bound to be first a People's Member ; and which, or how many, of his Secretaries and subor- dinates he might be allowed to take as Queen^s Members, my authority does not say, — perhaps has not himself settled ; the project being yet in mere outline or foreshadow, the practical embodiment in DOWNING STREET. 1:^7 all details to be fixed by authorities much more com- petent than he. The soul of his project is, That the Crown also have power to elect a few members to Parliament. From which project, however wisely it were em- bodied, there could probably, at first or all at once, no great 'accession of intellect' to the Government Of- fices ensue ; thongh a little might, even at first, and a little is always precious : but in its ulterior opera- tion, were that faithfully developed, and wisely pre- sided over, I fancy an immense accession of intellect might ensue ; — nay a natural ingress might thereby be opened to all manner of accessions, and the actual flower of whatever intellect the British Nation had might be attracted towards Downing Street, and con- tinue flowing steadily thither ! For let us see a little what efl'ects this simple change carries in it the pos- sibilities of. Here are beneficient germs, which the presence of one truly wise man as Chief Minister, steadily fostering them for even a few years, with the sacred fidelity and vigilance that would beseem him, might ripen into living practices, and habitual facts, invaluable to us all. What it is that Secretaries of State, Managers of Colonial Establishments, of Home and Foreign Gov- ernment interests, have really and truly to do in Parliament, might admit of various estimate in these times. An apt debater in Parliament is by no means certain to be an able administrator of Colonies, of Home or Foreign Aflfairs ; nay, rather, quite the con- trary is to be presumed of him ; for in order to be- come 'a brilliant speaker,' if that is his character. 14S DOWNING STREET. consideral3le portions of his natural internal endow- ment must liave gone to the surface, in order to make a shining figure t'nere, and precisely so mucii the less (few men in these days know how much less !) mnst remain available in the internal silent state, or as fac- ulty for thinking, for devising and acting, which latter and which alone is the function essential for him in his Secretaryship. Not to tell a good story for him- self ' in Parliament and to the twenty-seven millions, many of them fools;' not that, but to do good ad- ministration, to know with sure eye, and decide with just and resolute heart, what is what in the tJiings committed to his charge : this and not that is the ser- vice which poor England, whatever it may think and maunder, does require and v/ant of the Official Man in Downing Street. Given a good Official Man or Secretary he really ought, as far as it is possible, to be left working in the silent state. No mortal can both Avork, and do good talking in Parliament, or out of it : the feat is impossible as that of serving two hostile masters. Nor would I, if it could be helped, much trouble my good Secretary with addressing Parliament : need- ful explanations ; yes, in a free country, surely ; — but not to every frivolous and vexatious person, in or out of Parliament, who chooses to apply for them. There should be demands for explanation too which were reckoned frivolous and\ vexatious, and censured as such. These, I should say, are the not needt^ul ex- planations : and if my poor Secretary is to be called out from his workshop to answer every one of these, — his workshop will become (what we at present see it, DOWNING STREET. 149 deservedly or not) little other than a pillory ; the poor Secretary a kind of talking-machine, exposed to dead- cats and rotteii-eggs ; and the ' work ' got out of him or of it, will, as heretofore, he very inconsidera- hle indeed ! — Alas, on this side also, important im- provements are conceivahle ; and will even, I imagine, get them whence we may, be found indispensable one day. The honorable gentleman whom you inter- rupt here, he, in his official capacity, is not an indi- vidual now but the embodiment of a Nation ; he is the ' People of England ' engaged in the work of Secretaryship, this one ; and cannot forever afibrd to let the Three Tailors of Toolcy Street, break in upot? him at all hours ! — But leaving this, let us mark one thing which is vei-y plain : That whatever be the uses and dutiep. real or supposed, of a Secretary in Parliament, his fac- ulty to accomplish these is a point entirely uncon- nected with his ability to get elected into Parliament, and has no relation or proportion to it, and no concern with it whatever. Lord Tommy and the Honorable John are not a whit better qualified for Parliamentary duties, to say nothing of Secretary duties, than Plain Tom and Jack ; they are merely better qualified, as matters stand, for getting admitted to try them. Which state of matters a reforming Premier, much m want of abler men to help him, noAV proposes a//e/77?,o-. Tom and Jack, once admitted by the Queen's writ, there is every reason to suppose, will do quite as well there as Lord Tommy and the Honorable John. Ir. Parliament quite as well : and elsewhere, in the other infinitely more important duties of a Govern- 13* 150 DOWNING STREET. ment office, which indeed are, and remain the >3ssential, vital and intrinsic duties of such a person- age, is there the faintest reason to surmise that Tom and Jack, if well chosen, will fall short of Lord Tom- my and the Honorable John ? No shadow of a rea- son. 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 more human clothes-horses, at any period of their lives ; and have gained a schooling thereby, of which Lord Tommy, and the Honorable John, unhappily strangers to it for most part, can form no conception ! Tom and Jack have already, on this most narrow hypothesis, a decided superiority of likelihood ov^er Lord Tommy and the Honorable John. But the hypothesis is very narrow, and the fact is very wide : the hypothesis counts by units, the fact by millions. Consider how many Toms and Jacks there are to choose from, well or ill ! The aristocratic class from whom members of Parliament can be elected extends only to certain thousands ; from these you are to choose your Secretary, if a seat in Parlia- ment is the primary condition. But the general pop- ulation is of Twenty-seven Millions ; from all sec- tions of which you can choose, if the seat in Par- liament is not to be primary. Make it ultimate in- stead of primary, 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 the lowest DOVV>'ING STREET. 151 broad strata of the popnlation eqnall^^ as in the highest and narrowest, are produced men of every kind of genius ; man for man, your chance of genius is as good among the millions as among the units; —and class for class, what must it be ! From all classes, not from certain hundreds now but from several millions, whatsoever man the gods had gifted with intellect and nobleness, and power to help his coun- try, could be chosen: O Heavens, could, — if not by Tenpound Constitnencies and the force of beer, then, by a Reforming Premier with eyes in his head, who I think might do it quite infinitely better ! In- finitely better. For ignobleness cannot, by the nature of it, choose the noble : no, there needs a seeing man who is himself noble, cognizant by internal experi- ence of the symptoms of nobleness. Shall we never think of this ; shall we never more remember this, then ? It is forever true ; and Nature and Fact, how- ever we may rattle our ballot-boxes, do at no time forget it. From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the births are by the 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 Tw^enty Pounds a year.' Robert Burns never had tlie smallest chance to get into Parliament, much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to hat^e been found there. For the man, — it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim vulgar element, but might have been know^n to men of insight who had any loyalty or any royalty of their own, — was d born king of men : full of valor, of intelligence and 152 DOWNING STREET. heroic nobleness ; fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, ganging beer! Him no Tenpound Conslitnency chose, nor did any Reforming Premier: in the deep-snnk British Nation, overwhelmed in foggy stnpor, with the loadstars all gone out for it, there was no whisper of a notion that it could be desirable to choose him, — except to come and dine with yon, and in the interim to gauge. And yet heaven-born Mr. Pitt, at that period, was by no means without need of Heroic Intellects, for other purposes than gauging ! But sorrowful strangulation by redtape, much tighter then than it now is when so many revolutionary earthquakes have tussled it, quite tied up the meagre Pitt ; and he said, on hearing of this Burns and his sad hampered case, " Literature Avill take care of itself." — " Yes, and of you too, if 3^011 don't mind it ! " answers one. And so, like Apollo taken for a Neatherd, and per- haps for- none of the best on the Admetus establish- ment, this new Norse Thor had to put up with what was going ; to gauge ale, and he thankful ; pouring Ins celestial sunlight through Scottish Song-writing, — the narrowest chink ever offered to a Thunder-god before ! And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses and redtape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of), did not in the least know or understand, the impious god-forgetting mortals, that Heroic In- tellects, 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 Avell without' such ; did not see the use of such ; went along ' very ^ well' without such; well presided over by a singii- DOWNING STREET. 153 lar Heroic Intellect called George the Third ; and the Thimdergod, as was rather fit of liim, de])arted early, still in the. noon of life, somewhat weary of ganging ale! — O Peter, what a scandalons torpid element of yellow London fog, favorahle to owls only and their mousing operations, has blotted out the stars of Heaven for us these several generations back, — which, I rejoice to see, is now^ visibly about to take itself away again, or perhaps to be dispelled in a very tremendous manner ! For the sake of my Democratic friends, one other observation. Is not this Pioposal the very essence of whatever truth there is in ' Democracy ; ' this, that the able man be chosen, in whatever rank he is found ? That he be searched for as hidden treasure is : l)e trained, supervised, set to the work which he alone is fit for. All Democracy lies in this : this, I think, is worth all the ballot-boxes and suffrage-movements now going. Not that the noble soul, born poor, shouW be set to spout in Parliament, but that he should be set to assist in governing men : this is our grand Democratic interest. With this we can be saved ; without this, Avere there a Parliament spout- ing in every parish, and Hansard's Debates to stem the Thames, we perish, — die, constitutionally drowned, in mere oceans of palaver. V All reformers, constitutional persons, and men capa- ble of reflection, are invited to reflect on these things. Let us brush the cobwebs from our eyes ; let us bid the inane traditions be silent for a moment ; and ask ourselves, like men dreadfidly intent on having it 154 DOWNING STREET. done, " By what method or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as dia- mond grains from tlie general mass of sand ; the able men, not the sham-able; — and set to do' the work of governing, contriving, administering and gniding for us?" It is the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant lies there :- the attain- ment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government again by the Best. Reformed Parlia-ments have lamentably failed to attain it for us ; and I believe will and must for- ever fail. One true Reforming Statesman, one noble worshipper and knower of human intellect, with the quality of an experienced Politician too; he, backed by such a Parliament as England, once recognizing him, would loyally send, and at liberty to choose his working subalterns from all the Englishmen alive ; he surely might do something ? Something, by. one means or another, is becoming fearfully necessary to be done ! He, I think, might accomplish more for us in ten years, than the best conceivable Reformed Parliamei]t, and utmost extension 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 caimot so try. With even an approximately heroic Prime Minister, you could get nothing but good from prescribing to him thus, to choose the fittest man, under penalties: to choose, not the fittest 3f the four or three men that were in Parliament, but the fittest from the whole Twenty-seven Millions that he could hear of, — at his peril. Nothhig but DOWNING STREET. 153 good from this. From extension of the suffrage, some think, you might get quite otlier than good. From extension of tlie sutfrage, till it became a universal counting of heads, one sees not in the least what wisdom could be extracted. A Parliament of the Paris pattern, such as we see just now, might be ex- tracted : and from that ? Solution into nniversal slush ; drownage of all interests divine and human, in a Noah's-Deluge of parliamentary eloquence, — such as we hope our sins, heavy and manifold though they are, hav^e not yet quite deserved ! Who, then, is to be the Reforming Statesman, and begin the noble work for us ? He is the preliminary ; one such ; with him we may prosecute the enterprise to length after length ; without him we cannot stir in it at all. A true Jcing. temporary-king, that dare undertake the government of Britain, on condition of beginning in sacred earnest to ' reform ' it, not at this or that extremity, but at the heart and centre. That will expurgate Downing Street, and the practical Ad- ministration of our Affairs ; clear out its accumulated mountains of pedantries and cobwebs ; bid the Pedants and the Dullards depart, bid the Gifted and the Seeing enter and inhabit. So that henceforth there be Heav- c\\\Y light there, instead of Stygian dusk ; that God's vivifying light instead of Satan's deadening and kill- ing dusk, may radiate therefrom, and visit with heal- ing all regions of this British Empire, which now writhes through every limb of.it, in d^re a^ony as if 156 DOWxXING STREET of death ! The enterprise is great, the enterprise may be called formidable and even awful ; bat there is none nobler among tJie sublunary affairs of man- kind just now. Nay tacitly it is the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British Premier in these times ; — and I cannot esteem him an enviable Premier who, because the engagement is tacit, flatters himself that it does not exist ! " Show it me in the bond," he says. Your Lordship, it actually exists : and I think you will see it yet, in another kind of ' bond ' than that sheepskin one ! Bnt, truly, in any time, what a strange feeling, enongh to alarm a very big Lordship, this : that he, of the size he is, has got to the apex of English af- fairs ! Smallest wrens, we know, by training and the aid of machinery, are capable of many things. For this world abounds in miraculous combinations, far transcending anything they do at Drury Lane in the melodramatic way. A world which, as solid as it looks, is made all of aerial and even of spiritual stufl"; permeated all by incalculable sleeping forces and elec- tricities ; and liable to go oft', at any time, into the hugest developments, upon a scratch thoughtfully or thoughtlessly given on the right point: — Nay, for every one of us, could not the sputter of a poor pis- tol-shot shrivel the Immensities together like a burnt scroll, and make the Heavens and the Earth pass away with a great noise? Smallest wrens, and canary-birds of some dexterity, can be trained to han- dle lucifer-matches ; and have, before now, fired-off whole powder-magazines and parks of artillery. Per- DOWKIXG STREET. 157 naps tmfhonf much astonishment to the canary-bird. The canary-bird can hold only its own qnantity of astonishment ; and may possibly enongh retain its presence of mind, were even Doomsday to come. It is on this principle that I explain to myself the equa- nimity of some men and Premiers whom we have known. This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect coolness. And yet, I say. what a strange feeling, to find himself Chief Governor of England ; girding on, upon his moderately-sized new soul, the old battle-harness of an Oliver Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, a William Conqueror. '• I then am the Ablest of English attainable Men ? This English People, which has spread itself over all lands and seas, and achieved such works in the Ages, — which has done America, India, the Lancashire Cotton- trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, Newton's Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the British Constitution, — the apex of all its intelligences and mighty instincts and dulTib longings : it is I ? William Conqueror's big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's; Oliver's lightning soul, noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord : these are mine, I begin to perceive, — to a certain extent. These heroisms have I, — though rather shy of exhibitmg them. These; and some- thing withal of the huge beaver-faculty of our Ark- wrights, Brindleys ; touches too of the phoenix-mel- odies and sunny heroisms of our Shakspeares, of our Singers, Sages and inspired Thinkers : all this is in me, I will hope, — though rather shy of exhibiting it on common occasions. The Pattern Englishman, 14 158 DOWNING STREET. raised by solemn acclamation upon the bucklers of the English People, and saluted with universal 'God save THEE ! ' — has now the honor to announce him- self. After fifteen hundred years of constitutional study as to methods of raising on the bucklers, which is the operation of operations, the English people, surely pretty well skilled in it by this time, has raised — the remarkable individual now addressing you. The best-combined sample of whatsoever divine qualities are in this big People, the consummate flow- er of all that they have done and been, the ultimate Product of the Destinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the fuhiess of time, is — who think you ? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by which, with all these heroisms and accumulated energies old and new, the English people means to smite and pierce, is this poor tailor's bcdkin, hardly adequate to bore an eyelet-hole, who now has the honor to " Good Heavens, if it were not that men generally are very much of the canary-bird, here are reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost before starting ! But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflec- tion ! This, then, is the length we have brought it to, with our constitutioning, and ballot-boxing, and incessant talk and elfort in every kind for so many centuries back; this? The golden flower of our grand alchemical projection, which lias set the world in astonishment so long, and been the envy of sur- rounding nations, is — what we here see. To be governed by his Lordsliip, and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by this respectable de- gr^,e of human faculty. With our utmost soul's DOWICING STREET. 159 travail we could discover, by the sublimest methods eulogized by all the world, no abler Englishman than this ? — Really it should make us pause upon the s^iid sub- lime methods, and ask ourselves very seriously, wheth- er notwithstanding the eulogy of all the world, they can be other than extremely astonishing methods, that require revisal and reconsideration very much indeed ! For the kind of 'man ' we get to govern us, all conclu- sions whatsoever centre there, and likewise all man- ner of issues flow infallibly therefrom. ' Ask well, who is your Chief Governor,' says one : 'for around him men like to him will infallibly gather, and by degrees all the world will be made in his image.' ' He who is himself a noble man, has a chance to know the nobleness of men ; he who is not, has none. And as for the poor public, — alas, is not the kind of " man" you set upon it the liveliest symbol of its and your veracity and victory and blessedness, or unve- racity and misery and cursedness ; the general sum- mation, and practical 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 his place at the helm of affairs, and hurled down into the hold, perhaps even overboard, if he could not really steer. And we call those ages barbarous, because they shuddered to see a Phantasm at the helm of their affairs ; an eyeless Pilot with constitutional specta- cles, steering by the ear mainly? And we have changed all that : no-government is now the best 160 DOWNING STREF.T. and a tailor's foreman who gives no trouble is prefer- able to any other for governing ? My friends, such truly is the currentN idea ; but you dreadfully mistake yourselves, and the fact is not such. The fact, now beginning to disclose itself again in distressed Needle- women, famisliing Coimaughts, revolting Colonies, and a general rapid advance towards Social Ruin, re- mains really what it always was, and will so remain ! Men have very much forgotten it at present ; and only here a man and there a man begins again to be- think himself of it: but all men will gradually get reminded of it, perhaps terribly to their cost: and the sooner 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; nor is there any Constitution or body of Constitutions, were they clothed with never such venerabilities and general acceptabilities, that avails to deliver a Nation from the consequences of forgetting it. Nature, I assure you, does forever- more remember it ; and a hundred British Constitu- tions are but as a hundred cobwebs between her and the penalty she 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 worth in that People has for some time been. Whether they have loved the phylacteries or the eternal noblenesses; whether they have been struggling heavenward like eagles, brothers of the radiances, or groping owl-like with horn-eyed diligence, catching mice and balances at their banker's, — poor devils, you will see it all in that one fact. A fact long prepared beforehand ; which if it is a peaceably received one, must have been ac- DOWNING STREET. 161 quiesced in, judged to be 'best,' by the poor mousing owls, intent only to liave a large balance at their banker's and keep a whole skin. Such sordid populations, which Avere 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 esteemed M'Crow- dy ! Light, accept thelblessed light, if you will have it when Heaven vouchsafes. You refuse ? You pre- fer De Lolme on the British Constitution, the Gospel according to M'Crowdy, and a good balance at your banker's? Very well : the ' light' is more and more withdrawn; and for some time you have a general dusk, very favorable for catching mice ; and the opu- lent owlery is very Miappy,' and well off at its bank- er's; — and furthermore, by due sequence, infallible as the foundations of the Universe and Nature's oldest law, the ilght returns on 3^ou, condensed, this time, into lightnings which there is not any skin whatever too thick for taking in !- 11* THE NEW DOWNING STREET. In looking at this wreck of Governments in all Eu- ropean countries, there is one consideration that sug- gests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever. That they were not wise enough ; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate, — probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injnstices, and solecisms, and contradic- tions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure ; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false. This is a reflection sad but important to the mod- ern Governments now fallen anarchic, That they had not s[iiritual talent enough. And if this is so, then surely the question, How these Governments came to sink for icant of intellect ? is a rather interesting one. Intellect, in some measure, is born into every Centu- ry ; and the Nineteenth flatters itself that it is rather THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 163 distinguished that way! What had become of this cele- brated Nineteenth Century's intellect ? Surely some of it existed, and was "developed" withal; — nay, in the " undeveloped," unconscious, or inarticulate state, it is not dead ; but alive and at work, if mutely not less beneficently, some think even more so ! And yet Governments, it would appear, could by no means get enough of it ; almost none of it came their way : what had become of it? Truly there must be some- thing very questionable, either in the intellect of this celebrated Ccnlury, or in the methods Governments now have of supplying their wants from the same. One or other of two grand fundamental shortcomings, in regard to intellect or human enlightenment, are very visible in this enlightened Century of ours ; for it has now become the most anarchic of Centuries ; that is to say, has fallen practically into such Egyp- tian darkness that it cannot grope its way at all ! Nay, I rather think both of these shortcomings, fatal deficits both, are chargeable upon ns ; and it is the joint harvest of both that we are now reaping, with such havoc to our affairs. I rather guess, the hitellect of the Nineteenth Century, so full of miracle to Hcavyside and others, is itself a mechanical or heaver intellect rather than a high or eminently human one. A dim and mean though authentic kind of in- tellect, this ; venerable only in defect of better. This kind will avail but little in the higher enterprises of human intellect, especially in that highest enterprise of guiding men Heavenward, which, after all, is the one real " governing " of them on this God's-Earth : — an enterprise not to be achieved by beaver intcl- \Ql THE NEW DOWNING STREET. iectj but by other higher and highest kinds. This is deficit Jirst. And then secondly^ Governments have, really to a fatal and extraordinary extent, neglected in late ages to supply themselves with what intellect was going ; having, as was too natural in the dim time, taken up a notion that human intellect, or even beaver intellect, was not necessary to them at all, but that a little of the vulpine sort (if attainable), sup- ported by routine, redtape traditions, and tolerable parliamentary eloquence on occasion, would very well suffice. A most false and impious notion ; leading to fatal lethargy on the part of Governments, while Nature and Fact were preparing strange phenomena in contradiction to it. These are two very fatal deficits ; — the remedy of either of which would be the remedy of both, could we but find it ! For indeed they are vitally connected: one of them is sure to produce the other; and both once in action together, the advent of darkness, certain enough to issue in anarchy by and by, goes on with frightful acceleration. If Govern- ments neglect to invite what noble intellect there is, then too surely all intellect, not omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to become beaverish igno- ble intellect ; and quitting high aims which seem shut up from it, will help itself forward in the way of making money and suchlike ; or will even sink to be sham intellect, helping itself by methods which are not only beaverish but vulpine, and so " ignoble " as not to have common honesty. The Government, taking no thought to choose intellect for itself, w^ill gradually find that there is less and less of a good quality to THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 165 choose from : thus, as in all impieties it does, bad grows worse at a frightful double rate of progression; and yonr impiety is twice cursed. If yon are impious enough to tolerate darkness, you will get ever more darkness to tolerate ; and at that inevitable stage of the account (inevitable in all such accounts) when actual light or else destruction is the alternative, you will call to the Heavens and the Earth for light, and none will come ! Certainly this evil, for one, has 7zo/ " wrought its own cure;" but has wrought precisely the reverse, and has been hourly eating away what possibilities of cure there were. And so, I fear, in spite of ru- mors to the contrary, it always is with evils, with solecisms against Nature, and contradictions to the divine fact of things: not an evil of them has ever wrought its own cure in my experience ; — but has continually grown worse and wider and uglier, till some good (generally a good man) not able to endure the abomination longer, rose upon it and cured or else extinguished it. Evil Governments, divested of God's light because they have loved darkness rather, are not likelier than other evils to work 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 evi- dent ; every hour's persistance in it is making return more difficult. Intellect exists in all countries ; and the function appointed it by Heaven, — Governments had better not attempt to contradict that, for they cannot ! Intellect Jlcis to govern in this world ; and will do it, if not in alliance with so-called " Govern- 166 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. ments" of redtape and routine, then in divine hostil- ity to such, and sometimes ahis in diabolic hostility to such ; and in the end, as sure as Heaven is higher than Downing Street, xind the Laws of Nature are tougher than redtape, with entire victory over thein and entire ruin to them. If there is one thinking man among the Politicians of England, I consider these things extremely well worth his attention just now. Who are available to your Offices in Downing Street? All the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal "divine right" which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and adminis- trators ; and precisely as you employ them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favored of Heaven or disfavored. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of 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, as your natural enemy : which shall it be ? I consider that every Government convicts itself of infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself before God and man, according as it answers this question. With all sublunary entities, this is the question of ques- tions. What talent is born to you ?. How do you employ that ? The crop of spiritual talent that is born to you, of human nobleness and intellect and heroic faculty, this is infinitely more important than your crops of cotton or corn, or wine or herrings or whale-oil, which the Newspapers record with such anxiety every season. This is -not quite counted by THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 167 seasons, therefore the Newspapers are silent : but by- generations and centnries, I assure ycu it beccnies amazingly sensible ; and surpasses, as Heaven dees Earth, all the corn and wine, and whale-oil and California bullion, or any other crop yon grow. If that crop cease, the other crops — please to take them, also, if you are anxious about them. That once ceasing, we may shut shop ; for no other crop whatever will stay with us, nor is worth having if it would. To promote men of talent, to search and sift the whole society in every class for men of talent, and joyfully promote them, has not always been found impossible. In many forms of polity they have done it, and still do it, to a certain degree. The degree to which they succeed in doing it, marks, as I have said, with very great accuracy the degree of divine and human worth that is in them, the degree of suc- cess or real ultimate victory they can expect to have in this world. — Think, for example, of the Old Catholic Church, in its merely terrestrial relations to the State ; and see if your reflections, and contrasts" with what now is, are of an exulting character. Progress of the species has gone on as with seven- league boots, and to various directions has shot ahead amazingly, with three cheers from all the world ; but in this direction, the most vital and indispensable, it has lagged terribly, and has even moved backward, till now it is quite gone out of sight in clouds of cot- ton-fuz and railway-scrip, and has fallen fairly over the horizon to rearward ! In those most benighted Feudal societies, full of 168 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. mere tyrannous steel Barons, and totally destitute of Tenpound Franchises and Ballotboxes, there did nevertheless authentically preach itself every where this grandest of gospels, without whicli no other gospel can avail us much, to all souls of men, '•Awake, ye noble souls ; here is a noble career for yon ! " 1 say, every where 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 and nobly aspiring soul, — snch a soul, iu whatever rank of life it were born, had one path inviting it ; a generous career, whereon, by human worth and valor, all earthly heights and Heaven itself were attainable. In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. The Church, poor old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that : the noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, conld at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there ; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obe- dience, to pious reverence, self-r' raint, annihilation of self, — really to human nobleness, in maiiy most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money, capital, or the like; the one question was, ''Is there some human nobleness in yon, or is there not?" The poor neat- herd's son, if he were a Noble of Nature, might rise to "Priesthood, to High-priesthood, to the top of this worldj — and best of all, he had still high Heaven THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 169 lying high enough above him, to keep his head steady, on whatever height or in whatever depth his way might He ! A thrice-giorions arrangement, when I reflect on it ; most saUitary to all high and low interests, a truly human arrangement. You made the born noble yours, welcoming him as what he was, the Sent of Heaven : you did not force him either to die or become your enemy; idly neglecting or suppressing him as what he was not, a thing of no worth. You accepted the blessed light ; and in the shape of infer- nal lightning it needed not to visit you. How, like an immense mine-shaft through the dim oppressed strata of society, this Institution of tlie Priesthood ran ; opening, from the lowest depths towards all heights and towards Heaven itself, a free road of egress and emer- gence towards virtuous nobleness, heroism and well- doing, for every born man. This we may call the liv- ins: luns^s and blood-circulation of those old Feudal- isms. When I think of that immeasurable all-pervad- ing lungs ; present in every corner of human society, every meanest hut a cell of said lungs ; inviting what- soever noble pious soul was born there to the path that was noble for him ; and leading thereby, some- times, if he were worthy, to be the Papa of Christen- dom, and Commander of all Kings, — I perceive how the old Christian society continued healthy, vital, and was strong and heroic. When I contrast this with the noble aims now held out to noble souls born in remote huts, or beyond the verge of Palace- Yard ; and think of what your Lordship has done in the w^ay of mak- ing priests and papas, — I see a society without 15 170 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. lungs, fast wheezing itself to death, in horrid con- vulsions ; and deserving to die. Ofer Europe generally in these years, I consider that the State has died, has fairly coughed its last in street musketry, and fallen down dead, incapable of any but galvanic life henceforth, — owing to this same fatal want of lungs ^ which includes all other wants for a State. And furthermore that it will never come alive again, till it contrive to get such indispensable vital apparatus ; the outlook toward which consummation is very distant in most commu- nities of Europe. If you let it come to death or suspended-animation in States, the case is very bad ! Vain to call in universal-sufiVage parliaments at that stage : the universal-sutirage parliaments can- not give you any breath of life, cannot find any wisdom for you ; by long impiety, you have let the supply of noble human wisdom die out; and the wisdom that now courts your universal-suffrages is beggarly human aitonieyism or sham-Avisdom, which is not an insight into the Laws of God's Universe, but into the laws of hungry Egoism and the Devil's Chicane, and can in the end profit no community or man. No ; the kind of heroes that come mounted on the shoulders of the universal-suffrage, and install them- selves as Prime Ministers and healing Statesmen by force of able editorship, do not bid very fair to bring Nations back to the ways of God. Eloquent \\\^\\- \3.cke\L'd pinchbeck specimens these, expert in the arts of Belial mainly ; —fitter to be markers at some ex- THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 171 ceedingly expensive billiard-table, than sacred chief- priests of men ! "Greeks of the Lower Empire ;" with a varnish of parh'amentary rhetoric ; and, I sup- pose, this other great gift, toughness of character, — proof that they have persevered in their Master's service. Poor wretches, their industry is mob-worship, place-worship, parliamentary intrigue, and the multi- plex art of tongue-fence r flung into that bad element, there they swim for decades long, throttling and wrestling one another according to their strength, — and the toughest or lucldest gets to land, and becomes Premier. A more entirely nnbeautiful class of Pre- miers was never *raked out of the ooze, and set on high places, by any ingenuity of man. Dame Du- barry's petticoat was a better seine-net for fishing out Premiers than that. 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 might help itself by better methods. In England heroic wisdom is not yet dead, and quite replaced by attorneyism : the honest beaver faculty yet abounds with us, the heroic manful faculty shows itself also to the observant eye, not dead but dangerously sleeping. I said there were many kirigs in England : if these can yet be rallied into strenuous activity, and set to governing England in Downing Street and elsewhere, which their func- tion always is, — then England can be saved from anarchies, and universal sufl'rages, and that Apotheosis of Attorneyism, blackest of terrestrial curses, may be spared us. If these cannot, the other issue, in such 172 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. forms as may be appropriate to us, is inevitable. \Yhat escape is there ? England must conform to the eternal laws of life, or England too must die ! . England, with the largest mass of real living in- terests ever intrusted to a Nation; and with amass of extinct imaginary and quite dead interests piled upon it to the very Heavens, and encumbering it from shore to shore, — does reel and stagger ominously in these years: urged by the Divine Silences and the Eternal Laws to take practical hold of its living interests and man- age them ; and clutching blindly into its venerable extinct and imaginary interests, as if that were still the way to do it. England must contrive to manage its living interests, and quit its dead ones and their methods, or else depart from its place in this world. Surely England is called as no Nation ever was, to summon out its ki7ig-s, and set them to that high ^vork ! — Huge inorganic England, nigh choked under the exuvias of a thousand years, and blindly sprawling amid Chartism, ballotboxes, prevenient graces, and bishop's nightmares, must, as the prelim- inary and commencement of organization, learn to breathe again, — get "lungs" for herself again, as we defined it. That is imperative upon her : she too will die, otherwise, and cough her last upon the streets some day; — how can she continue living? To enfranchise whatsoever of Wisdom is born in England, and set that to the sacred task of coercing and amending what of folly is born in England : Heaven's blessing is purchasable by that ; by not that, only Heaven's curse is purchasable. The re- form contemplated, my liberal friends perceive, is a THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 173 truly radical one ; no ballntbox ever went so deep into tlie roots: a radical, most painful, slow and difFi- cult, but most indispensable reform of reforms ! How short and feeble an. approximation to these nigh ulterior results, the best Reform of Downing Street, presided over by the fittest Statesman one can imagine to exist at present, would be, is too apparent to me. A long time yet till we get our living interests put under due administration, till we get our dead interests handsomely dismissed. A long time yet till, by extensive change of habit and ways of thinking and acting, ice get living " lungs " for ourselves ! Nevertheless, by Reform of Downing Street, we do begin to breathe ; we do start in the way towards that and all high results. Nor is there visible to me any other way. Blessed enough, were the way once entered on ; could we, in our evil days, but see the noble enterprise begun, and fairly in progress ! What the " New Downing Street " can grow to, and will and must if England is to have a Downing Street beyond a few years longer, it is far from me, in my remote watchtower, to say with precision. A Downing Street inhabited by the gifted of the intel- lects of England ; directing all its energies upon the real and living interests of England, and silently but incessantly, in the alembics of the place, burning up the extinct imaginary interests of England, that we may see God's sky a little plainer overhead, and have all of us a great accession of " heroic Avisdom " to dispose of: such a Downing Street — to draw the 15* 174 THE NEW DOWNING STEEET. plan of it, will require architects ; many successive architects and builders will be needed there. Let not editors, and remote unprofessional persons, inter- fere too much! — Change in the present edifice, however, radical change, all men can discern to be inevitable : and even, if there shall not worse swiftly follow.^ to be imminent. Outlines of the future edifice paint themselves against the sky (to men that still have a sky, and are above the miserable LondoUvfogs of the hour); noble elements of new State Architecture, foreshadows of, a New Downing Street for the New Era that is come. These with pious hope all men can see ; and it is good that all men, with whatever faculty they have, were earnestly looking thitherward ; — trying to get above the fogs, that they might look thitherward ! Among practical men the idea prevails that Gov- ernment can do nothing but " 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 this footing, a very feeble Downing Street might serve the turn ! — I am well aware that Government, for a long time past, has taken in hand no other public task, and has professed to have no other, but that of keeping the peace. This public task, and the private one of ascertaining whether Dick or Jack was to do it, have amply filled the capabilities of Government for several generations now. Hard tasks both, it would appear. In accomplishing the first, for ex- TEE NETV DOWNING STREET. 175 ample, have not heaven-born Chancellors of the Ex- chequer had to shear us very bare ; and to leave an overplus of Debt, or of fleeces shorn before they are grown, justly esteemed among the wonders of the world ? Not a first-rate keeping of the peace, this, we begin to surmise ! At least it seems strange to us. For we, and the overwhelming majority of ^all our acquaintances, in this Parish and Nation and the ad- jacent Parishes and Nations, are profoundly conscious to ourselves of being by nature peaceable persons ; following our necessary industries ; without wish, interest or faintest intention to cut the skin of any mortal, to break feloniously into his industrial prem- ises, or do any injustice to him at all. Because in- deed, independent of Government, there is a thing called conscience, and we dare not. So that it can- not but appear to us, '• the peace," under dexterous management, 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 poor hardworking creature of us has laboriously earned sixpence, the Government comes in, and (as some compute) sUys, " I will thank you for three- pence of that, as per account, for getting you peace to spend the other threepence," our amazement begins to be considerable, — and I think results will follow from it by and by. Not the most dexterous keeping of the peace, your Lordship, unless it be more diffi- cult to do than appears ! Our domestic peace, we cannot but perceive, as good as keeps itself. Here and there a select Equitable 176 THE NEW DOWxNING STREET. Person, appointed by the Public for that end, clad in ermine, and backed by certain companies of blue Police, is amply adeqnate, without immoderate out- lay in money or otherwise, to keep down the few exceptional individuals of the scoundrel kind ; who we observe, by the nature of them, are always weak and inconsiderable. And as to foreign peace, really all Europe, now especially with so many railroads, public journals, printed books, penny-posts, bills of exchange, and continual intercourse and mutual de- pendence, is more and more becoming (so to speak) one Parish ; the Parishioners of which being, as we ourselves are, in immense majority peaceable hard- working people, could, if they were moderately v/ell guided, have almost no disposition to quarrel. Their economic interests are one, " To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest ; " their faith, any religious faith they have, is one, "To annihilate shams, — by all methods, street-barricades included." Why should they quarrel ? The Czar of Prussia, in the Eastern parts of the Parish, may have other notions ; but he knows too Avell he must keep them to himself. He, if he meddled with the Western parts, and attempted anywhere to crush or disturb that sacred Democratic Faith of theirs, is aware thero would rise from a hundred and fifty million human throats such a Hymn of the Marseillese as was never heard before ; and England, France, Germany, Po- land, Hungary and the Nine Kingdoms, hurling themselves upon him in never-imagined fire of ven- geance, would swiftly reduce his Russia and him to a strange situation 1 Wherefore he forbears, — and THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 177 being a person of some sense, will long forbear. In spite of editorial prophecy, the Czar of Russia does not disturb our night's rest. And with the other parts of the Parish our dreams and our thoughts are of anything but of fighting, or of the smallest need to fight. For keeping of the peace, a t?iing highly desirable to us. we strive to be grateful to your Lordship. Intelligible to us, also, your Lordship's reluctance to get out of the old routine. But we beg to say far- ther, that peace by itself has no feet to stand upon, and would not suit us even if it had. Keeping of the peace is the function of a policeman, and but 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 do properly this: To see, so far as human effort under pain of eternal rep- robation can, God's Kingdom incessantly advancing here below, and His will done on earth as it is in Heaven ? On Sundays your Lordship knows this well ; forget it not on weekdays. I assure you it is forevermore a fact. That is the immense divine and never-ending task which is laid on every man, and v/ith unspeakable increase of emphasis on every Government or Commonwealth of men. Your Lordship, that is the basis upon which peace and all else depends ! That basis once well lost, there is no peace capable of being kept, — the only peace that could then be kept is that of the churchyard. Your Lordship may depend on it, whatever thing takes upon it the name of Sovereign or Goveriiment in an English Nation such as this, will have to get out 178 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. of that old routine ; and set about keeping some- thing very different from the peace, in these days ! Truly it is high time that same beautiful notion of No-Government should take itself away. The world is daily rushing towards wreck, while that lasts. If yoiu- Government is to be a Constituted Anarchy, wliat issue can it have ? Our one interest in such Government is, that it would be kind cnougli to cease and go its ways, before the inevitable arrive. The question. Who is to float atop nowhither upon the popular vortexes, and act that sorry cliaracter, '• car- cass of the drowned ass upon the mud-delngo? " is by no means an important one for almost anybody, — hardly even for the drowned ass himself. Such drowned ass ought to ask himself, U the function is a sublime one ? For him too, though he looks sublime to the vulgar and floats atop, a private situ- ation, down out of sight in his natiu-al ooze, would be a luckier one. Crabbe, speaking of constitutional philosophies, faith in the ballotbox and suchlike, has tliis indignant passage: "If any voice of deliverance or resusci- tation reach us, in this our low and allbut lost estate, sunk almost beyond plummet's sounding in the mud of Lethe, and oblivious of all noble objects, — it will be an intimation that we must put away all this abominable nonsense, and understand, once more, that Constituted Anarchy, with however many bal- lotboxes, caucuses, and hustings-beerbarrels, is a continual offence to gods and men. That to be governed by small men is not only a misfortune, but THE NEW DOWNING STTIEET. 179 it is a curse and a sin ; the effect, and alas the cause also, of all manner of curses and sins. Thsyt to pro- fess subjection to phantasms, and pretend to accept guidance from fractional parts of tailors, is what Smelfungus in his rude 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 least feel to be a lie, having spoken and done it continually everywhere for such a long time past ; — but has Nature grown to accept it as a veracity, think you, my. friend ? Have the Parca3 fallen asleep, because you wanted to make money in the City ? Nature at all moments knows well that it is a lie ; and that, like all lies, it is cursed and damned from the beginning. " Even so, ye indigent millionaires, and miserable bankrupt populations rolling in gold, — whose note of hand will go to any length in Threadneedle Street,' and to whom in Heaven's Bank the stern answer is, ' No effects ! ' Bankrupt, I say ; and Californias and Eldorados will not save us. And every time we speak such lie, or do it or look it, as we have been inces- santly doing, and many of us with clear conscious- ness, for about a hundred and fifty years now, Nature marks down the exact penalty against us. ' Debtor to so much lying : forfeiture of existing stock of worth to such extent; — approach to general damna- tion by so much.' Till now, as we look round us over a convulsed anarchic Europe, and at home over an anarchy not 3^et convulsed, but only heaving towards convulsion, and to judge by the Mosaic sweat- ing-establishmentSj cannibal Connaughts and other 80 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. symptoms, not far from convulsion now, we seem to have pi*tty 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 bourne which I do not 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 Economy 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 ! Unnameable 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 mes- sage 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'Crowdy and the Faith of Leave-alone will do : the Right Honorable Minimus is well enough ; 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 con- stitutions, forms of government, and political methods THE NEW DOWNING STREET. I3l amang men, the question to be asked is even this, What kind of nian do you set over us ? All questions are answered in the answer to this. Another thing is worth attending to : No people or populace, with never such ballotboxes, can select such man for you ; only the man of worth can recognize worth in men ; to the commonplace man of no or of little worth, you. unless you wish to be misled, need not apply on such an occasion. Those poor Tenpound Franchisers of yours, they are not even in earnest ; the poor sniffing sniggering Honorable Gentlemen they send to Parlia- ment are as little so. Tenpound Franchisers full of mere beer and balderdash ; Honorable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to an Almack's series of even- ing parties, or big cockmain (battle of all the cocks) very amusing to witness and bet upon : what can or conld 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? 1 tell you, a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make noth- ing but nonsense 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 arc bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, "We do not quite understand thee ; we perceive thee to be nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee." The question therefore arises, Wliether, since re- 16 182 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. form of parliament and suchlike have done so little in that respect, the problem might not 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 infi- nite imp(-)rtance, nay, the vital necessity there is of getting able and abler men : — might not 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 none 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, ignorant of masonry and archi- tecture, cannot avail to cure the house of smoke ; not if tJtey vote and a';,itate forever, and bestir them- selves to the 'en^th even of street-barricades, v/ill the smoke in the least abate : how can it ? Their passion exercised in such w-ays, till Doomsday, will avail them nothing. Let their passion rage steadily against the existing majordomos to this effect, " Find ns men skilled in house-building, acquainted with the laws of atmospheric suction, and capable to cure smoke ; " something niisht come of it ! In the lucky circumstance of having one man pf real intel- lect and courage to put at tl;e head of the movement, much would come of it ; — a 'Kew Downing Street, fit for the Britisli Natio-;. p.nd its bitter necessities in this New Era, woula r^jp-e : and from that, in answer to continuous sacred fidelity and valiant toil, all good whatsoever would gradually come. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 1R3 Of the Contjnental nuisance called " Bureaucracy,'^ — if this should alarm any reader, — I can see no risk or possibility in England. Democracy is hot enough here, fierce enough ; it is perennial, univer- sal, clearly invincible, among us henceforth. No 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 ! Democ- racy 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 ^killed," — 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 all hands under- stood to be very urgent there. Large needless ex- penditures of money, immeasurable ditto of hypoc- risy and grimace ; embassies, protocols, worlds of extinct traditions, empty pedantries, foul cobwebs : — but we 'TVill by no means apply the " live coal " of our witty friend ; the Foreign Office will repent, and not be driven to suicide ! A truer time will come for the Contine-ntal Nations too : Authorities based on truth, and on the silent or spoken Worship of Human Nobleness, will again get themselves established there ; all Sham-Authorities, and consequent Real- Anarchies based on universal suffrage and the Gospel 184 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. according to George Sand, being put away : ahd no- ble action, heroic new-developments of human fac- ulty and industry, and blessed fruit as of Paradise getting itself conquered from the waste battle-field of the chaotic elements, will once more, there as here, begin to show themselves. When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of i](.cir Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternal facts again, our Foreign Office may again have extensive con- cerns with them. And at all times, and even now, there will remain the question to be sincerely put and wisely answered, AVhat essential concern has the British Nation with them and their enterprises ? Any concern at all, except that of handsomely keeping apart from them ? If so, Avhat are the methods of best managing it? — At present, as was said, while Red Republic but clashes with foul Bureaucracy ; and Nations, sunk in blind ignavia, demand a univer- sal-suffrage Parliament to heal their wretchedness ; and wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle with Sham-Kingship and extinct or galvanized Catholi- cism ; and in the Cave of the Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled against each other, — our English interest in the controversy, how- ever huge said controversy grow, is quite trifling ; we have only in a handsome manner to say to it : " Tumble and rage along, ye rotten waifs and wrecks ; clash and collide as seems fittest to you ; and smite each other into annihilation at your own good pleas- ure. In that huge conflict, dismal but unavoidable, we, thanks to our heroic ancestors, having got so far THE N2W DOWNING STREET. 185 ahead of you, have noAV no interest at all. Onr de- cided notion is, the dead ought to bury theii dead in such a case : and so we have the honor to be, witli distinguished consideration, your entirely devoted, — Flimnap, Sec. Foreign Department." — I really think Flimnap, till truer times come, ought to treat much of his work in this Avay : cautious to give of- fence to his neighbors ; resohite not to concern him- self in any of their self-annihilating operations what- soever. Foreign wars are sometimes unavoidable. We ourselves, in the course of natural merchandizing and laudable business, have now and then got into am- biguous situations ; into quarrels which needed to be settled, and without fighting would not settle. Sugar Islands, Spice Islands, Indias, Canadas, — these, by the real decree of Heaven, were ours : and nobody would or could believe it, till it was tried by cannon law, and so proved. Such cases happen. In former times especially, owing very much to want of inter- course and to the consequent mutual ignorance, there did occur misunderstandings: and therefrom many foreign wars, some of them by no means unnecessary. With China, or some distant country, too unintelli- gent of us and too unintelligible to us, there still sometimes rises . necessary occasion for a war. Nevertheless wars. — misunderstandings that get to the length of arguing themselves out by sword and cannon, — have, in these late generations of improved intercourse, been palpably becoming less and less necessary ; have in a manner become superfluous, — 16* 183 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. if we had a little wisdom, and our Foreign Office on a good footing. Of European wars I really hardly remember any, since Oliver Cromwell's last Protestant or Liberation I war with Popish antichristian Spain some two hun- j (ked years ago, to which I for my own part could y{ have contributed my life with any heartiness, or in I fact would have subscribed money itself to any con- 1 siderable amount. Dutch William, a man of some heroism, did indeed get into troubles with Louis Fourteenth ; and there rested still some shadow of Protestant Interest, and question of National arid individual Independence, over those wide controver- sies : a little money and human enthusiasm was still due to Dutch William. Illustrious Chatham also, not to speak of his Manilla ransoms aiid the like, did one thing : assisted Fritz of Prussia, a brave man and king (almost the only sovereign King I have known since Cromwell's time) like to be borne down by ignoble men and sham-kings ; for this let illus- trious Chatham too have a little money and human enthusiasm, — a little, by no means much. But what am I to say of heavenborn Pitt the son of Chatham? England sent forth her fleets and armies; her money into every country ; money as if the heavenborn Chancellor had got a Fortunatus' piu'se ; as if this Island iiad become a volcanic fountain of gold, or new terrestrial sun capable of radiating mere guineas. The result of all which, what was it? Elderly men can remember the tarbarrels burnt for success and thrice immortal victory in the business, and yet what result had we ? The French Revolution, a Fact de- THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 187 creed in the Eternal Councils, could not be put down ; the result was, that heavenborn Pitt had actually- been fighting (as the old Hebrews would have said) against the Lord, — that the Laws of Nature were stronger than Pitt. Of whom, therefore, there re- mains chieily his unaccountable radiation of guineas, for the gratitude of posterity. Thank you for noth- ing, — for eight hundred millions less than nothing ! Onr War-Ofllccs, Admiralties, and other Fighting Establishments, are forcing themselves on everybody's attention at this time. Bull grumbles audibly : " The money you have cost me these five-and-thirty years, during which you have stood elaborately ready to fight, al any moment, without at any moment being called to fight, is surely an astonishing sum. The National Debt itself might have been half paid by that money, which has all gone in pipeclay and blank cartridges!" Yes, Mr. Bull, the money can be counted in hundreds of millions; which certainly is something: — but the "strenuously organized idle- ness," and what misclnef that amounts to, — have you computed it? A perpetual solecism, and blas- phemy (of its sort,) set to march openly among us, dressed in scarlet ! Bull, with a more and more sulky tone, demands that such solecism be abated ; that these Fighting Establishments be as it were dis- banded, and set to do some work in the Creation, since fighting there is now none for them. This demand is irrefiagably just, is growing urgent too ; and yet this demand cannot be complied with, — not yet while the State grounds itself on unrealities, and Downing Street continues what it is. 138 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. The old Romans made their soldiers woiic during intervals of war. The New Downing Street, too, we may predict, will have less and less tolerance for idleness on the part of soldiers or others. Nay. the New Downing Street, I foresee, when once it has got its ^'Industrial Regiments" organized, will make these mainly do its fighting, what fighting there is ; and so save immense sums. Or, indeed, all citizens of the Commonwealth, as is the right and the interest of every free man in this world, will have themselves trained to arms ; each citizen ready to defend his country with his own body and soul, — he is not Avorthy to have a country otherwise. In a State grounded on veracities, that would be the rule. Downing Street, if it cannot bethink itself of return- ing to the veracities,'-will have to vanish altogether ! To fight with its neighbors never Avas, and is now less than ever, the real trade of England. For far other objects was the English People created into this world ; sent down from the Eternities, to mark with its history certain spaces in the current of sub- lunary Time! Essential, too, that the English People should discover what its real objects are ; and reso- lutely follow these, resolutely refusing to follow other than these. The State will have victory so far as it can do that ; so far as it cannot, defeat. In the New Downing Street, discerning what its real functions are, and with sacred abhorrence putting away from it what its functions are not^ we can fancy changes enough in Foreign Office, War Office, Colo- nial Office, Home Office ! Our War-soldiers Indus- trial, first of all; doing nobler -than Roman works, THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 189 Avhen fighting is not wanted of them. Seventy-fours not hanging idly by tlieir anchors in the Tagus, or off Sapienza (one of the saddest sights under the sun), but busy, every Seventy-four of them, carrying-over streams of British Industrials to the immeasurable Britain that lies beyond the sea in every zone of the world. A State grounding itself on the veracities, not on the semblances and the injustices : every citi- zen a soldier for it. Here would be new real Secre- taryships and Ministries, not for foreign war and diplomacy, but for domestic peace and utility. Min- ister of Works ; Minister of Justice, — clearing his Model prisons of their scoundrelism ; shipping his scoundrels wholly abroad, under hard and just drill- serjeants (hundreds of such stand wistfully ready for you, these thirty years, in the Rag-and-Famish Club and elsewhere!) into fertile desert countries; to make .railways. — one big railway (says the Major*) quite across America"; fit to employ all the able-bodied Scoundrels and efficient Half-pay Officers in Nature ! Lastly, — or rather /rs//?/, and as the preliminary of all, — would there not be a Minister of Education ? Minister charged to get this English People taught a little, at his and our peril ! Minister of Education ; no longer dolefully embayed amid the wreck of moribund '- religions," but clear ahead of all that ; steering, free and piously fearless, towards Ids divine goal under the eterr.al stars ! O, Heaven ! and are these things forever impossible, then ? Not a whit. To-morrow morning they might all begin to be, and go on through blessed centuries realizing ♦ Major Carmichael Smith : see liis Pamplilets on this subject. 190 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. themselv^es, if it were not that, — alas, if it were not that we are most of us insincere persons, sham talk- ing-machines, and hollow windy fools ! Which it is nol *' impossible " that we should cease to be, I hope ! Constitutions for the Colonies are now on the anvil ; the discontented Colonies are all to be cured of their miseries by Constitutions. Whether that will care their miseries, or only operate as a Godfrey's Cordial to stop their whimpering, and in the end w^orsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us* One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial questions : the singular placidity with which the British Statesman at this time, backed by M'Crowdy and the British monied classes, is prepared to surren- der whatsoever interest Britain, as foundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in the decision. " If you want to go from us, go ; we by no means want you to stay : you cost us money yearly, which IS scarce ; desperate quantities of trouble, too ; why not go, if you wish it ? " Such is the humor of the British Statesman, at this time. Men clear for rebel- lion, '• annexation -' as they call it, walk openly abroad in our American Colonies ; found newspapers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexation- ism : increasing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that ; — Majesty's Chief Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question ; Majesty's Chief Gov- ernor in fact seldom appearing on the scene at all, THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 191 except to receive the impact of a i^ew rotten eggs on occasion, and then duck in again to his private con- templations. And yet one would think the Majes- ty's Chief Governor ought to have a kind of interest in the thing? Pubhc liberty is carried to a great length in some portions of her Majesty's dominions. But tlie question. "Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or start rebelhng against her ? So many as are for rebeUing, hold up your hands ! " Here is a public discussion of a very extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a Governor of Canada. How the Governor of Canada, being a British piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceiv- able at first view. He does it seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. It is a constitutional sight like few. And yet an instinct deeper than the Gospel of M'Crowdy teaches all men that Colonies are worth oomething to a country ! That if, under the present Colonial Office, they are a vexation to us and them- selves, some other Colonial Office can and must be contrived which shall render them a blessing ; and that the remedy will be to contrive such a Colonial Ollice or method of administration, and by no means to cut the Colonies loose. Colonies are not to be picked off the street every day ; not a Colony of them but has been bought dear, well purchased by the toil and blood of those we have the honor to be sons of"^; and we cannot just afl^'ord to cut them away because M'Crowdy finds the present management of them cost mouey. The present management will 192 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. indeed require to be cut away ; — but as for the Col- onies, we purpose through Heaven's blessing to retain them a while yet ! Shame on us for unworthy sons of brave fathers if we do not. Brave fathers, by val- iant blood and sweat, purchased for us, from the bounty of Heaven, rich possessions in all zones ; and we. wretched imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering them ! And because the accounts do not stand well in the ledger, our remedy is, not to take shame to ourselves, and repent in sackcloth and ashes, and amend our beggarly imbecilities and insin- cerities in that as in other departments of our busi- ness, but to fling the business overboard, and declare the business itself to be bad ! We are a hopeful set of heirs to a big fortune ! It does not suit our Man- ton gunneries, grouse-shootings, mousings in the City ; and like spirited young gentlemen we will give it up and let the attorneys take it? Is there no value, then, in human things, but what can write itself down in the cash-ledger? All men know, and even M'Crowdy in his inarticulate heart knows, that to men and Nations there are invaluable values which cannot be sold for money at all. George Robins is great ; but he is not omnipotent. George Robins cannot quite sell Heaven and Earth by auc- tion, excellent though he be at the business. Nay, if M'Crowdy offered his own life for sale in Thread- needle Street, would anybody buy it ? Not I, for one. " Nobody bids : pass on to the next lot," an- swers Robins. And yet to M'Crowdy this unsaleable lot is worth all the Universe : — nay, I believe, to us also it is worth something ; good monitions, as to sev- THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 193 eral things, do lie in this Professsor of the Dismal Science ; and considerable sums even of money, not to speak of other benefit, will yet come out of his life and him, for which nobody bids! Robins has his own field whore he reigns triumphant ; but to that we will restrict him with iron limits; and neither Colonies nor the lives of Professors, nor other such invaluable objects shall come under his hammer. Bad state of the ledger will demonstrate that your way of dealing with your Colonies is absurd, and urgently in want of reform ; but to demonstrate that the Empire itself must be dismembered to bring the ledger straight ? Oh never. Something else than the ledger must intervene to do that. Why does not England repudiate Ireland, and insist on the '' Repeal," instead of prohibiting it under death-penalties? Ire- land has never been a paying speculation yet, nor is it like soon to be ! Why does not Middlesex repudi- ate Surrey, and Chelsea Kensington, and each county and each parish, and in the end each individual set up for himself and his cash-box, repudiating the other and his, because their mutual interests have got into an irritating course ? They must change the course, seek till they discover a soothing one ; that is the remedy, when limbs of the same body come to irritate one another. Because tiie paltry tatter of a garment, reticulated for you out of thrums and listings in Downing Street, ties foot and hand together in an in- tolerable manner, will you relieve yourself by cutting off the hand or the foot ? You will cut off the pal- try tatter of a pretended body-coat, I think, and fling that to the nettles ; and imperatively require one that 17 194 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. fits your size better. Miserabler theory than that of money on the ledger being the primary rule for Empires, or for any higher entity than City owls and their mice-catching; cannot well be propounded. And I would by no means advise Felicissimus, ill at ease on his high-trotting and now justly impatient Sles- wicker, to let the poor horse in its desperation go in that direction for a momentary solace. If by lumber- log Governors, by Godfrey's-cordial Constitutions or otherwise, he contrive to cut off the Colonies or any real right the big British Empire has in her colonies, both he and the British Empire will bitterly repent it one day ! The Sleswicker, relieved in ledger for a moment, will fiiid that it is wounded in heart and honor forever ; and the turning of its wild forehoofs upon Felicissimus as he lies in the ditch combed off, is not a thing I like to think oiT! Britain, whether it be known to Felicissimus or not, has other tasks appointed her in God's Universe than the making of 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 assigned this Nation; and they also at last are coming upon her again, clamorous, abstruse, inevita- ble, much to her bewilderment just now ! This poor Nation, painfully dark about said tasks and the way of doing them, means to keep its Col- onies nevertheless, as things which somehow or other must have a value, were it better seen into. They are portion? of the geuei'al Earth, where the childxeii THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 195 of Britain now dwell ; where the gods have so far sanc- tioned their endeavor, as to say that they have a right to dwell. England will not readily admit that her own children are worth nothing but to be flung out of doors ! England looking on her Colonies can say : ''Here are lands and seas, spice-lands, corn-lands, tim- ber-lands, overarched by zodiacs and stars, clasped by many-sounding seas ; wide spaces of the Maker's building, fit for the cradle yet of mighty nations and their Sciences and Heroisms. Fertile continents still inhabited by wild beasts are mine, into which all the distressed populations of Europe might pour themselves and make at once an Old World and a New World hu- man. By the eternal fiat of the gods, this must yet one day be; this, by all the Divine Silences that rule this Universe, silent to fools, eloquent and awful to the hearts of the wise, is incessantly at this moment, and at all moments, commanded to begin to be. Un- speakable deliverance, and new destiny of thousand- fold expanded manfulness for all men, dawns out of the Future here. To me has fallen the godlike task of initiating all that : of me and of my Colonies, the abstruse Future asks. Are you Avise enough for so sublime a destiny ? Are you too foolish ? " That you ask advice of whatever wisdom is to be had in the Colony, and even take note of what tin- wisdom is in it, and record that too as an existing fact, will certainly be very advantageous. But I suspect the kind of Parliament that will suit a Colony is much of a secret just now ! Mr. Wakefield, a demo- cratic man in all fibres of him, and acquainted with 196 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. Colonial Socialities as few are, judges that the fran- chi?e for your Colonial Parliament should be decided- ly seleqt, and advises a high money qualification ; as there is in all colonies a fluctuating, migratory mass, not destitute of money, but very much so of loyalty, permanency, or civic availability ; — whom it is ex- tremely advantageous not to consult on Avhat you are about attempting for the Colony or. Mother Country^ This I can well believe ; — and also that a '-- high money qualiiication," in the present sad state of hu- man affairs, might be some help to you in selecting; though whether even that would quite certainly bring "wisdom," the one thing indispensable, is much a question with me. It might help, it might help! And if by any means you could (which you cannot !) exclude the Fourth Estate, and indicate decisively that Wise advice was the thing wanted here, and Par- liamentary Eloquence was not the thing wanted any- where just now, — there might really some light of experience and human foresight, and a truly valuable benefit, be found for you in such assemblies. And there is one thing, too apt to be forgotten, which it much behoves us to remember: In the Col- onies, as everywhere else in this world, the vital point is not who decides, but what is decided on ! That measures tending really to the best advantage tem- poral and spiritual of the Colony be adopted, and strenuously put in execution ; there lies the grand interest of every good citizen British and Colonial. Such measures, whosoever have originated and pre- scribed them, will gradually be sanctioned by all men and gods ; and clamors of every kind in reference to THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 1C7 tliem may safely to a great extent be neglected, as clamorous merely, and sure to be transient. Colonial Governor, Colonial Parliament, whoever or whatever does an injustice, or resolves on an ?»nvisdom, he is the pernicious object, however parliamentary he be! I have known things done, in this or the other Col- ony, in the most parliamentary way before now, which carried written on the brow of them sad symptoms of eternal reprobation ; not to be mistaken, had you painted an inch thick. In Montreal, for example, at this moment, standing amid the ruins of the " Elgin Marbles'' (as they call the burnt walls of the Parlia- ment House there), what rational British soul but is forced to institute the mournfullest constitutional reflections? Some years ago the Canadas, probably not without materials for discontent, and blown upon by skilful artists, blazed up into crackling of musketry, open flame of rebellion ; a thing smacking of the gal- lows in all countries that pretend to have any "Gov- ernment." Which flame of rebellion, had there been no loyal 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 was varnished into some kind of feasibility again. A most poor feasibility ; momentary, not lasting, nor like to be of profit to Canada! For this year, the Canadian most constitutional Parliament, such a con- geries of persons as one can imagine, decides that the aforesaid flame of rebellion shall not only be forgot- ten as per bargain, but that — the loyal population, who flung their lives upon it and quenched it in the 17* 198 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. nick of time, shall pay the rebels (heir damages ! Of this, I believe, on sadly conclusive evidence, there is no doubt whatever. Such, when you wash off the constitutional pigments, is the Death's-head that dis- closes itself. I can only say, if all the Parliaments in the world were to vole that such a thing was just, I should feel painfully constrained to answer, at my peril, "No, by the Eternal, never ! " And I would recommend any British Governor who might come across that Business, there or here, to overhaul it again. What the meaning of a Governor, if he is not to overhaul and control such things, may be, I cannot conjecture. A Canadian Lumber-log may as well be made Governor. He might have some cast-metal hand or shoulder-crank (a thing easily contrivable in Birmingham) for signing his name to Acts of the Colonial Parliament ; he would be a '' native of the country " too, with popularity on that score if on no other ; — he is your man, if you really want a Log Governor ! I perceive, therefore, that, besides choosing Parlia- ments never so well, the New Colonial Office will have another thing to do : Contrive to send out a new kind of Governors to the Colonies. This will be the mainspring of the business ; without this the business will not go at all. An experienced, wise and valiant British man, to represent the Imperial Interest; he, with such a speaking or silent Collective Wisdom as he can gather round him in the Colony, will evidently be the condition of all good between the Mother Country and it. If you can find such a THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 199 man voiu* point is gained ; if you cannot, lost. By him and his Collective Wisdom all manner of true relations, mutual interests and duties such as they ao exist in fact between Mother Country and Colony, can be gradually developed into practical methods and results ; and all manner of true and noble suc- cesses, and veracities in the way of governing, be won. Choose well your Governor ; — not from this or that poor section of the Aristocracy, military, naval or redtapist : wherever there are born kings 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 the whole, you must succeed in finding a man Jit. And having found him, I would farther recommend you to keep him some time ! It would be a great improvement to end this present nomadism of Colonial Governors. Give your Gov- ernor due power ; and let him know withal that he is wedded to his enterprise, and having once well learned it, shall continue with it ; that it is not a Canadian Lumber-log you want there, to tumble upon the vortexes and sign its name by a Birming- ham shoulder-crank, but a Governor of men ; who, you mean, shall fairly gird himself to his enterprise, and fail with it and conquer with it, and as it were live and 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 him with moderate certainty, from him and his Collective Wisdom, all good whatsoever might be anticipated. And surely, were the Colonies 200 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. once enfranchised from redtape, and the poor Mother Country once enfranchised from it ; were our idle Sev- enty-fours all busy carrying-out streams of British In- dustrials, and those Scoundrel Regiments all working, under divine drill-serjeants, at the grand Atlantic and Pacific Junction Railway, — poor Britain and her poor Colonies might find that they luid true relations to each other ; that the Imperial Mother and her con- stitutionally obedient Daughters was not a -redtapc fiction, provoking bitter mockery as at present, but a blessed God's-Fact destined to fill half the world with its fruits one day ! But undoubtedly our grand primary concern is the Home Oflice, and its Irish Giant named of Despair. When the Home Office begins dealing with this Irish Giant, which it is vitally urgent for us the Home Office should straightway do, it will find its duties enlarged to a most unexpected extent, and, as it were, altered from top to bottom. A changed time now when the question is. What to do with three njillions of 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 this world long, got a quite immense new ques- tion, and continually recurring set of questions. That huge question of the Irish Giant, with his Scotch and English Giant-Progeny advancing open- mouthed upon us, will, as I calculate, change from THE NEW DOWNING STPvEET. 201 top to bottom not the Home Office only, but all man- ner of Offices and Institutions whatsoever, and grad- ually the structure of Society itself. I perceive, it Avill make us a new Society, if we are to continue a Society at all. For the alternative is not, Stay where we are, or Change ? But Change, with new wise effort fit for the new time, to true and wider nobler National Life ; or Change, by indolent folding of the arms, as we are now doing, in horrible anarchies and convulsions to Dissolution, to National Death, or Sus- pended-animation ? Suspended-animation itself is a frightful possibility for Britain : this Anarchy whithe.r all Europe has preceded us, where all Europe is now weltering, would suit us as ill as any ! The question for the British Nation is : Can we work our course pacifically, on firm land, into the New Era ; or must it be, for us too, as for all the others, through black abysses of Anarchy, hardly escaping, if we do with all our struggles escape, the jaws of eternal Death ? For Pauperism, though it now absorbs its high figure of millions annually, is by no means a ques- tion of money only, but of infinitely higher and greater than all conceivable money. If our Chan- cellor of the Exchequer had a Fortunatus' purse, and miraculous sacks of Indian meal that would stand scooping from forever, — I say, even on these terms Pauperism could not be endured ; and it would vitally concern all British Citizens to abate Pauperism, and never rest till they had ended it again. Pauperism is the general leakage through every joint of the ship that is rotten. Were all men doing their duty, or even seriously trying to do it, there would be no 202 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. Pauper. Were the pretended Captains of the world at all in the hahit of connnanding ; were llie pre- tended Teachers of the world at all in the habit of teaching, — of admonishing said Captains among others, and with sacred zeal apprising them to what place such neglect was leading, — how could Pauper- ism exist ? Pauperism would lie far over the horizon ; wo should be lamenting and denouncing quite infe- rior sins of men, which were only tending afar off towards Pauperism. A true Captaincy ; a true Teachership, either making all men and Captains know and devoutly recognize the eternal law of things, or else breaking its own heart, ai]d going about with sackcloth round its loins, in testimony of continual sorrow and protest, and prophecy of God's vengeance upon such a course of things : either of these divine equipments would have saved us ; and it is because we have neither of them that we are come to such a pass ! We may depend upon it, where there is a Pauper, there is a sin ; to make one Pauper there go many sins. Pauperism, is our Social Sin grown manifest j developed frdm the siate of a spiritual ignobleness, a practical impropriety and base oblivion of duty, to an afiair of the ledger. Here is not now an unheeded sin against God ; here is a concrete ugly hulk of Beggary demanding that you should buy Indian meal for it. Men of reflection have long looked with a horror for which there was no response in the idle public, upon Pauperism ; but the quantity of meal it demands has now awalcened men of no reflection to consider it. Pauperism is the poisonous dripping THE NEW DOWNING STKEET. S03 from all the sins, and putrid uiiveracities and godfor- getting greedinesses and devil-serving cants and Jes- uitisms, that exist among us. Not one idle Sham lounging about Creation upon false pretences, upon means which he has not earned, upon theories wliich he does not practise, but yields his share of Pauper- ism somewhere or other. His sham-work oozes down ; finds at last its issue as human Pauperism, — in a human being that by those false pretences can- not live. The Idle Workhouse, now about to burst of overfilling, Avhat is it but the scandalous poison- tank of drainage from the universal Siygian quag- mire of our affairs ? Workliouse Paupers; immortal sons of Adam rotted into that scandalous condition, subter-slavish, demanding that you would make slaves of them as an unattainable blessing ! My friends, I perceive the quagmire must be drained, or we caimot live. And farther, I perceive, this of Pauperism is the corner where we must begin, — the levels all pointing thitherward, the possibilities lying all clearly there. On that Problem we shall find that innumerable things, that all things whatsoever hang. By courageous steadfast persistance in that, I can forsee Society itself regenerated. la the course of long strenuous centuries, I can see the State hecpme what it is actually bound to be, the keystone of a most real^" Organization of Labor,*' — and on this Earth a world of some veracity, and some hero- ism, once more worth living in !\ The State in all European countries, and in Eng- land first of all, as J hope, will discover that its r 204 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. functions are now, and have long been, very wide 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 a dramatic speciosity, ex- pending its strength in practices and objects fallen, many of them quite obsolete ; that it must come a little nearer the true aim again, or it cannot continue in this world. The " Champion of England," cased in iron or tin, and ''able to mount his horse with lit- tle assistance," — this Champion and the thousand- fold cousinry of Phantasms he has, nearly all dead now but still walking as ghosts, must positively take himself away : who can endure him, and his solemn trumpetings and obsolete gesticulations, in a Time thav, is full of deadly realities, coming openmouthed ripon us? At Drury Lane let him play his part, him and his thousandfold cousinry ; and welcome, so long as any public will pay a shilling to see him : but on the solid earth, under the extremely earnest stars, we dare not palter wnth him, or accept his tom- fooleries any more. Ridiculous they seem to some ; horrible they seem to me : all lies, if one look whence they come and whither they go, are horrible. Alas, it will be found, I doubt, that in England more than in any country, our Public Life and our Private, om' State and our Religion, and all that we do and speak (and the most even of what we thin/c) is a tissue of half-truths and whole-lies ; of hypocri- sies, conventionalisms, wornout traditionary rags and cobwebs; such a life-garment of beggarly incredible and uncredited falsities as no honest souls of Adam's Posterity were ever enveloped in before. And we THE n£w downing STREET. 205 walk about in it with a stately gesture, as if it were some priestly stole or imperial mantle; not the foul- est beggar's gabardine that ever was. '' No English- man dare believe the truth," says one ; " he stands, for these two hundred years, enveloped in lies of every kind ; from nadir to zenith an ocean of tradi- tionary cant surrounds him as his life-element. He really thinks the truth dangerous. Poor wretch, you see him everywhere endeavoring to temper the truth by taking the falsity along with it, and welding them together ; this he calls ' safe course,' ' moderate course,' and other fine names ; there, balanced be- tween God and the Devil, he thinks he can serve two masters, and that things will go well with him." In the cottonspinning and similar departments our English friend knows well that truth or God will have nothing to do with the Devil or falsehood, but will ravel all the web to pieces if you introduce the Devil or Nonveracity in any form into it: in this department, therefore, our English friend avoids false- hood. But in the religious, political, social, moral, and all other spiritual departments he freely intro- duces falsehood, nothing doubting ; and has long done so, with a profuseness not elsewhere met with in the world. The unhappy creature, does he not know then that every lie is accursed, and the parent of mere 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 man vio- lates with impunity, he must not and shall not wag the tongue of him except to utter his thought ? That there is not a grin or beautiful acceptable 18 206 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. grimace he can execute upon his poor countenance, but is either an express veracity, the image of v/hat passes within him ; or else is a bit of Devil-worship which lie and the rest of us will have to pay for yet? Alas, the grins he executes upon liis poor mind (which is all tortured into St. Vitus dances, and ghastly mer- ry-andrewisnis, by the practice) are the most extraor- dinary this sun ever saw. We have Puseyisms, black-and-white surplice con- troversies : — do not, officially and otherwise, the select of the longest heads in England sit with intense application and iron gravity, in open forum, judging of " prevenient grace ? " Not a head of them suspects that it can be improper so to sit, or of the nature of treason against the Power who gave an Intellect to man; — that it can be other than the duty of a good citizen to use his god-given intellect in investigating prevenient grace, supervenient moon- shine, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, if that happened to turn up. I consider them far ahead of Cicero's Roman Augurs with their chicken-bowels : " Behold these divine chicken-bowels, O Senate and Roman People ; the midriff has fallen eastward ! '^ solemnly intimates one Augur. "By Proserpina and the triple Hecate," exclaims the other, '• I say the midriff has fallen to the west ! " And they look at one another with the seriousness of men prepared to die in their opinion, — the authentic seriousness of men betting at Tattersall's, or about to receive judgment in Chancery. There is in the English- man something great, beyond all Roman greatness, in whatever line you meet him ; even as a Latter-Day THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 207 Angur he seeks his fellow ! — Poor devil, I believe it is his intense love of peace, and hatred of breeding discussions which lead nowhither, that has led him into this sad practice of amalgamating true and false. He has been at it these two hmidred years ; and has now carried it to a terrible lengtli. He couldn't follow Oliver Cromwell in the Puritan path heaven- ward, so steep was it, and beset with thorns, — and becoming uncertain withal. He much preferred, at that juncture, to go heavenward with his Charles Sec- ond and merry Nell Gwynues, and old decent formu- laries and good respectable aristocratic company, for escort ; sore he tried, by glorious restorations, glori- ous revolutions, and so forth, to perfect this desirable amalgam; hoped always it might be possible; — is only just now, if even now, beginning to give up the hope ; and to see with wide-eyed horror that it is not at Heaven he is arriving, but at the Stygian marshes, with their thirty thousand Needlewomen, cannibal Connaughts, rivers of lamentation, continual wail of infants, and the yellow-burning gleam of a Hell-on- Earth ! — Bull, my friend, you must strip that aston- ishing pontiff-stole, imperial mantle, or whatever you imagine it to be, which I discern to be a garment of curses, and poisoned Nessus'-shirt now at last about to take fire upon you ; you must strip that off your poor body, my friend ; and, were it only in a soul's suit of Utilitarian buff, and such belief as that a big •loaf is better than a small one, come forth into con- tact with your world, under true professions again, and not false. You wretched' man, you ought to weep for half a century on discovering what lies you 208 THE NEW DOAVNING STREET, have believed, and what every lie leads to and pro- ceeds from. O my friend, no honest fellow in this Planet was ever so served by his cooks before ; or has eaten such quantities and qualities of dirt as you have been made to do, for these two centuries past. Arise, my horribly maltreated yet still beloved Bull ; steep yourself in running water for a long while, my friend ; and begin forthwith in every conceivable direction, physical and spiritual, the long-expected Scavenger Age. Many doctors have you had, my poor friend ; but I perceive it is the Water-Cure alone that will help you: a complete course of scavengerism \s \\\q thing you need! A new and veritable heart-divorce of England from the Babylonish woman, who is Jesuit- ism and Unveracity, and dwells not at Rome now, but under your own nose and everywhere ; whom, and her foul worship of Phantasms and Devils, poor England Jiad once divorced, with a divine heroism not forgotten yet, and well worth remembering now : a clearing out of Church and State from the unblessed host of Phantasms AMhich have too long nestled thick there, under those astonishing " Defenders of the Faith," — Defenders of the Hypocrisies, the spiritual Vampyres and obscene Nightmares, under which England lies in syncope : — this is what you need ; and if you cannot get it you must die, my poor friend ! Like people, like priest. Priest, King, Home Of- fice, all manner of establishments and offices among a people bear a striking resemblance to the people itself. It is because Bull has been eating so much THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 209 dirt that his Home Offices have got into such a shockingly dirty condition, — the old pavements of them quite gone out of sight and out of memory, and nothing hut mountains of long-accumulated dung in which the poor cattle are spr-awling and tumbling. Had his own life been pure, had his own daily con- duct been grounding itself on the clear pa\oments or actual beliefs and veracities, would he have let his Horne Offices come to such a pass ? Not in Downing Street only, but in all other thoroughfares and arenas and spiritual or physical departments of his existence, running water and Herculean scavengerism have be- come indispensable, unless the poor man is to choke in his own exuvias, and die the sorrowfuUest death. If the State could once get back to the real sight of its essential function, and with religious resolution begin doing that, and putting away its multifarious imaginary functions, and indignantly casting out these as mere dung and insalubrious horror and abomina- tion, (which they are.) 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 honora- ble existence, or existence on human terms at all, have become impossible for millions of British men, how can the Home Office or any other Office long exist ? With Thirty thousand Needlewomen, a Con- naught fallen into potential cannibalism, and the Idle Workhouse every where bursting, and declaring it- self an i/ihumanity and stupid ruinous brutality not 18* 210 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. much longer to be tolerated among rational human creatures, it is time the State were bethinking itself. So soon as the State attacks that tremendous cloaca of Pauperism, which will choke the world if it be not attacked, the State will find its real functions very different indeed from what it had long supposed them ! The State is a reality and not a dramaturgy ; it exists here to render existence possible, existence desirable and noble, for the State's subjects. The State, as it gets into the track of its real work, will find that same expand into whole continents of new unexpected, most blessed activity ; as its dramatic functions, declared superfluous, more and more fall inert, and go rushing like huge torrents of extinct exuviae, dung and rubbish, down to the Abyss for- ever. O Heaven, to see a State that knew a little why it was there, and on what ground, in this Year 1850, it could pretend to exist, in so extremely earnest a world as ours is growing ! The British State, if it will be the crown and keystone of our British Social Existence, must get to recognize, with a veracity very long unknown to it, what the real objects and indispensable necessities of our Social Existence are. Good Heavens, it is not prevenient grace, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, that is pinching us ; it is the impossibility to get along any farther for moun- tains of accumulated dung and falsity and horror ; the total closing up of noble aims from every man, — of any aim at all, from many men, except that of rotting out in Idle Workhouses an existence below that of beasts ! Suppose the State to have fairly started its " In- THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 211 dustiial Rejriments of the New Era," which, alas, are yet only beginning to bs tallxed of, — what conti- nents of new real work opened out, for the Home and all other Public Oflices among us! Suppose the Home Oflice looking out, as for life and salvation, for proper men to command these " Regiments." Suppose the announcement were practically made to all British souls that the want of wants, more indispensable than any jewel in the crown, was that of men able to com- 7nand men in ways of industrial and moral well-do- ing ; that the State would give its very life for such men ; that such men were the State ; that the quan- tity of them to be found in England, lamentably small at present, was the exact measure of England's worth, — what a new dawn of everlasting day for all British souls! Noble British soul, to whom the gods have given faculty and heroism, what men call genius, here at last is a career for thee. It will not be needful now to swear fealty to the Incredible, and traitorously cramp thyself into a cowardly canting play-actor in God's Universe ; or, solemnly forswearing that, into a mutinous rebel and waste bandit in thy generation : here is an aim that is clear and credible, a course fit for a man. No need to become a tor- menting and self-tormenting mutineer, banded with rebellious souls, if thou >vouldst live ; no need to rot in suicidal idleness ; or take to platform preaching, and writing in Radical Newspapers, to pull asunder the great Falsity in which thou and all of us are chok- ing. The great Falsity, behold it has become, in the very heart of it, a great Truth of Truths; and in- vites thee and all brave men to cooperate with it in 212 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. transforming all the body and the joints into the 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 faith- fully for it; noble is tJiis struggle ; thou, too, accord- ing 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 by men, — the summary of all blessedness for a social creature here below. The sore struggle, never to be relaxed, and not forgiven to any son of man, is once more a noble one ; glory to the Highest, it is now once more a true and noble one, wherein a man can afford to die ! Our path is now again Heavenward. Forward, with steady pace, with drawn weapons, and unconquer- able hearts, in the name of God that made us all ! — Wise obedience and wise command, I foresee that the regimenting of Pauper Banditti into Soldiers of Industry, is but the beginning of this blessed process, which will extend to the topmost heights of our Society ; and, in the course of generations, make us all once more a Governed Commonwealth, and Civ- itas Dei, if it please God ! Waste-land Industrials succeeding, other kinds of Industry, as Cloth-making, shoe-making, plough-making, spade-making, house- building, — in the end. all kinds of Industry whatso- ever, will be found capable of regimenting. Mill- operatives, all manner of free operatives, as yet unreg- imented, nomadic under private masters, they, seeing such example and its blessedness, will say : '•' Masters, you must regiment us a little ; make our interests THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 213 with you permanent a little, instead of temporary and nomadic ; we will enlist with the State other- wise ! " This will go on, on the one hand, while the State-operation goes on, on the other : thus will all Masters of Workmen, private Captains of In- dustry, be forced to incessantly cooperate with the State and its public Captains ; they regimenting in their way, the State in its way, with ever-widening field ; till their fields meet (so to speak) and coalesce, and there be no unregimented worker, or such only as are fit to remain unregimented, any more. — O, my friends, I clearly perceive this horrible cloaca of Pau- perism, wearing nearly bottomless now, is the point where we must begin. Here, in this plainly unen- durable portion of the general quagmire, the lowest point of all, and hateftil even to M'Crowdy, must our main drain begin : steadily prosecuting that, tearing that along with Herculean labor and divine fidelity, we shall gradually drain the entire Stygian Swamp, and make it all once more a fruitful field. For the State, I perceive looking out with right sacred earnestness for persons able to command, will straightway also come upon the question : " What kind of schools aifd seminaries, and teaching and also preaching establishments have I for the training of youn'g souls to take command and to yield obedience ? Wisfe command, wise obedience : the capability of these 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 ihat can command and obey ; he that cannot is a 214 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. bad. If my teachers and my preachers, with their seminaries, liigh schools, and cathedrals, do train men to these gifts, the thing they are teaching and preaching mast be true ; if they do not, not true ! " The State, once brought to its veracities by the thumbscrew in this manner, what loill 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 even English or Teutonic speech, but old Grecian and Italian speech, dead and buried and much lying ont of our way these two thousand years last past, — will be found a most astonishing semi- nary for the training of young English souls to lake command in human Industries, and act a valiant part under the sun ! The State dogs not want vocables, but manly wisdoms and virtues : the State, does it want parliamentary orators, first of all, and men capable of writing books ? What a ragfair of extinct monkeries, high-piled here in the very shrine of our existence, fit to smite the generations with atrophy and beggarly paralysis, — as we see it do! The Minister of Education will not want for work, I think in the 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 finish of the State's eftbrts, in this operation of regimenting, will be to get the true Souls'-Overseers set over men's souls; to regiment as the consummate flower of all, and con- stitute into some Sacred Corporation, bearing author- ity and dignity in their generation, the Chosen of the THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 215 Wise, of the Spiritual, and Devoutmindecl, the Rev- erent who deserve reverence, who are as the Salt of the Earth ; — that not till this is done can the State consider its edifice to have reached the first story, to be safe for a moment, to be other than an arch with- out the keystones, and supported hitherto on mere wood. How this will be done? Ask not; let the second or the third generation after this begin to ask! Alas, wise men do exist, born duly into the world in every current generation ; but the getting of iliem regimented is the highest pitch of human Polity, and the feat of all feats in political engineering : — impop.- sible for us, in this poor age, as the building of St. Paul's would be for Canadian Beavers, acquainted only with the architecture of fish-dams, and with no trowel but their tail. Literature, the strange entity so-called, — that in- deed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes, and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Litera- ture. If Literature dwindle, 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 for half- pence or for guineas, there will be no hope in Litera- ture. What if our next set of Souls'-Overseers were to be silent ones very mainly ! — Alas, alas, why gaze into the blessed continents and delectable mountains of a Future based on truth, while as yet we struggle far down nigh suffocated in a slough of lies, unccr- 216 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. tain whether or how we shall be able to climb at all! — Who will begin the long steep journey with us : who of living statesmen will snatch the standard, and say, like a hero on the forlorn-hope for his country, Forward ! Or is there none ; no one that can and dare? And our lot too, then, is Anarchy by barricade or ballotbox, and Social Death ? — We will not think so. Whether Sir Robert Peel will undertake the Re- form of Downing Street for us, or any Ministry or Reform farther, is not known. He, they say, is get- ting old ; does himself recoil from it, and shudder at it ; which is possible enough. The clubs and coteries appear to have settled that he surely will not ; that this melancholy wriggling seesaw of red tape Trojans 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 clubs and coteries, you do not hear two rational men speak long together upon poli- tics, without pointing their inquiries towards this man. A minister that will attack the Augis Stable of Down- ing Street, and begin producing a real Management, no longer an imaginary one, of our Affairs ; he, or elsG in ii^w years Chartist Parliament and the Deluge come: that seems the alternative. As I read the omens, there was no man in my time more authentically called to a post of difficulty, of danger, and of honor than this THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 21 man. The enterprise is ready for him, if he is ready for it. He has hut to lift his finger in this enterprise, and whatsoever is wise and manful in England will rally round him. If the faculty and heart for it be in him, he, strangely and almost tragically if we look upon his history, is to have leave to try it ; he now, at the eleventh hour, has the opportunity for such a feat in reform as has not, in these late generations, been attempted by all our reformers put together. As for Protectionist jargon, who in these earnest days would occupy many moments of his time with that ? "A Costermonger in this street," says Crabbe, " finding lately that his rope of onions, which he hoped would have brought a shilling, was to go for only sevenpence heiiceforth, burst forth into lamentation, execration, and the most pathetic tears. Throwing up the window, I perceived the other costermongers preparing impatiently to pack this one out of their company as a disgrace to it, if he would not hold his peace and take the market rate for his onions. I looked better at this Costermonger. To my aston- ished imagination, a star-and-garter dawned upon the dim figure of the man ; and I perceived that here was no Costermonger to be expelled with ignominy, but a sublime goddess-born Ducal Individual, whom I forbear to name at this moment ! What an omen ; — nay to my astonished imagination, there dawned still fataller omens. Surely, of all human trades ever heard of, the trade of Owning Land in England ought not to bully us for drinkmoney just now ! — " " Hansard's Debates," continues Crabbe farther on, *' present many inconsistencies of speech j lamentable 19 218 THE NEW DOWNING STREET. ^ unveracities uttered in Parliament, by one and indeed by all ; in which sad list Sir Robert Peel stands for his share among others. Unveracities not a few Avere spoken in Parliament ; in fact, to one with a sense of Avhat is called God's truth, it seemed all one unve- racity, a talking from the teeth outward, not as the convictions but as the expediencies and inward as- tucities directed ; and, in the sense of God's truth, I have heard no true word uttered in Parliament at all. Most lamentable unveracities continually spoken in Parliament, -by almost every one that had to open his mouth there. But the largest veracity ever done in Parliament in our time, as we all know, was of this man's doing ; — and that, you will find, is a very considerable item in the calculation ! " Yes, and I believe England in her dumb way re- members that, too. And " the Traitor Peel " can very well afford to let innumerable ducal Costermon- gers, parliamentary Adventurers, and lineal repre- sentatives of the Impenitent Thief, say all their say about him, and do all their do. With a virtual Eng- land at his back, and an actual eternal sky above him, there is not much in the total net amount of that. When the master of the horse rides abroad, many dogs in the village bark ; but he pursues his journey all the same. STUMP-ORATOR. It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centu- ries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech Our earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift ot culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech ; rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in the highest university, it is still in- trinsically grammar, under various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen, — this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook up- wards, are continually urging and guiding us. Pre- ceptor or professor, looking over his miraculous seed- plot, seminary as he well calls it, or crop of young human souls, watches with attentive view one organ of his delightful little seedlings growing to be men, — the tongue. He hopes we shall all get to speak yet, if it please Heaven. " Some of you shall be book 220 STUIMP- ORATOR. writers, eloquent review-writers, and astonish man* kind, my young friends : others in white neckcloths shall do sermons by Blair and Lindley Murray, nay, by Jeremy Taylor and judicious Hooker, and be priests to guide men heavenward by skilfully bran- dished handkerchief and the torch of rhetoric. For others there is Parliament and the election beerbarrel, and a course that leads men very high indeed ; these shall shake the senate-house, the Morning News- papers, shake the very spheres, and by dexterous wag- ging of the tongue disinthrall mankind, and lead our afflicted country and us on the way we are to go. The way if not where noble deeds are done, yet where noble words are spoken, — leading us if not to the real Home of the Gods, at least to something which shall more or less deceptively resemble it ! " So fares it with the son of Adam, in these bewil- dered epochs ; so, from the first opening of his eyes in this world, to his last closing of them, and depart- ure hence. Speak, speak, O speak; — if thou have any faculty, speak it, or thou diest and it is no fac- ulty ! So in universities, and all manner of dames' and other schools, of the very highest class as of tlie very lowest ; and Society at large, when we enter there, confirms with all its brilliant review-articles, successful publications, intellectual tea-circles, literary gazettes, parliamentary eloquences, 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 for itself, what is it? Nothing ; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at best make money by railways. STUMP-ORATOR. 221 And this is deep-rooted in our habits, in our social^ educational and other arrangements ; and all this, when we look at it impartially, is astonishing. Di- rectly in the teeth of all this it may he asserted that speaking 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 general human excel- lence, or availability in this world ; nay that, unless we look well, it is liable to become the very worst test ever devised for raid availability. The matter extends very far, down to the very roots of the world, whither the British reader cannot conveniently follow me just now : but I will venture to assert the three following things, and invite him to consider well wdiat truth he can gradually find in them : First, that excellent speech, even speech reallij excellent, is not, and never was, the chief test of hu- man faculty, or the measure of a man's ability, for any true function whatsoever ; on the contrary, that excellent silence needed always to accompany excel- lent speech, and was and is a much rarer and more difficult gift. Secondly, that really excellent speech, — which I, being possessed of the Hebrew Bible or Book, as well as of other books in my own and for- eign languages, and having occasionally heard a wise man's word among the crowd of unwise, do almost unspeakably esteem, as a human gift, — is terribly apt to get confounded with its counterfeit, sham- excellent speech ! And furthermore, that if really excellent human speech is among the best of hinnar. things, then sham-excellent ditto deserves to be ranked with the very worst. False speech, — capable of 19* 222 STUMP-OKATOR. becoming, as some one has said, the falsest and basest of all human things : — put the case, one were listen- ing to that as to the truest and noblest ! Which, little as we are conscious of it, I take to be the sad lot of many excellent souls among us just now. So many as admire parliamentary eloquence, divine popular lit* erature, and suchlike, are dreadfully liable to it just now ; and whole nations and generations seem as if getting themselves asphyxiaed, constitutionally, into their last sleep, by means 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 iuvite considerate men to 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-false speech getting itself admired and worshipped, instead of detested and suppressed. A truly alarming predicament ; and not the less so if we find it a quite pleasant one for the time being, and welcome the advent of asphyxia, as we would that of comfortable natural sleep ; — as, in so many senses, we are doing ! Surly judges there have been who did not much admire the ' Bible of Modern Litera- ture,' or any thing you could distil from it, iu contrast with the ancient Bibles ; and found that in the matter of speaking, our far best excellence, where that could be obtained, was excellent silence, which means en- durance and exertion, and good w^o/Vv with lips closed ; and that our tolerablest speech was of the nature of honest commonplace introduced where indispensable, which only set up for being brief and true, and could STUMP-ORATOR. 223 not be mistaken for excellent. These are hard say- ings for many a British reader, unconscious of any damage, nay joyfully conscious to himself of much profit, from that side of his possessions. Surely on this ^ide, if on no other, matters stood not ill with him ? The ingenuous arts had softened his manners ; the parliamentary eloquences supplied him with a succedaneum for government, the popular literatures with the finer sensibilities of the heart : surely on this ivindwai'd side of things the British reader was not ill off? — Unhappy British reader ! In fact, the spiritual detriment we unconsciously suffer, in every province of our aflfairs, from this our prostrate respect to power of speech is incalculable. For indeed it is the natural consummation of an epoch such as ours. Given a general insincerity of mind for several generations, you will certainly find the Talker established in the place of honor; and the Doer, hidden in the obscure crowd, with activity lamed, or working sorrowfully forward on paths un- worthy of him. All men are devoutly prostrate, worshipping the elo'quent talker; and no man knows what a scandalous idol he is. Out of whom in the mildest manner, like comfortable natural rest, comes mere asphyxia and death everlasting ! Probably there is not in Nature a more distracted phantasm than your conmionplace eloquent speaker, as he is found on platforms, iii parliaments, on Kentucky stumps, at tavern-dinners, in windy, empty, insincere times like ours. The 'excellent Stump-Orator,' as our admiring Yankee friends define him, he who in any occurrent set of circumstances can start forth, mount upon his 224 STUMP-ORj\TOR. * Stump,' liis rostrum, tribune, place in parliament, or other ready elevation, and pour forth from him his ap- propriate 'excellent speech,' his interpretation of the said circumstances, in sucii manner as poor windy mor- tals round him shall cry bravo to, — he is not an artist I can much admire, as matters go ! Alas, he is in gen- eral merely the windiest mortal of them all ; and is admired for being so, into the bargain. Not a windy blockhead there who kept silent but is better off than this excellent stump-orator. Better off, for a great many reasons; for this reason, were there no other: the silent one is not admired ; the silent sus- pects, perhaps partly admits, th^it he is a kind of blockhead, from which salutary self-knowledge the excellent stump-orator is debarred. A mouthpiece of Chaos to poor benighted mortals that lend ear to him as to a voice from Cosmos, this excellent stump-orator fills me with amazement. Not empty these musical wind-utterances of his ; they are big with prophecy ; they announce, too audibly to me, that the end of many things is drawing nigh ! Let the British reader consider it a little ; he too is not a little interested in it. Nay he, and the Eu- ropean reader in general, bnt he chiefly in these days, will require to consider it a great deal, — and to take important steps in consequence by and by, if I mis- take not. And in the meanwhile, sunk as he himself is in that bad element, and like a jaundiced man struggling to discriminate yellow colors, — he will have to meditate long before he in any measure get the immense meanings of the thing brought home to him ;. and discern, with asto^iishment, alarm, and STUMP-ORATOR. 225 almost terror and despair, towards what fatal issues, in our Collective Wisdom and elsewhere, this notion of talent meaning eloquent speech, so obstinately en- tertained this long while, has been leading us ! Who- soever shall look well into origins and issues, will find this of eloquence and the part it now plays in our affairs, to be one of the gravest phenomena; and the excellent stump-orator of these days to be not only a ridiculous but still more a highly tragical personage. While the many listen to him, the few are used to pass rapidly, with some gust of scornful laughter, some growl of impatient malediction ; but he de- serves from this latter class a much more serious attention. In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first instituted, this function of the schoolmavS- ter, to teach mere speaking, was the natural one. In those healthy times, guided by silent instincts and the monition of Nature, men had from of old been used to teach themselves what it was essential to learn, by the one sure method of learning anything, practical apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for all classes ; as it now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class. The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft ; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given : a course of education, then as now 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 226 STUMP- OHAT OR. a few both to do and to endure, — among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing be had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or writtei] utterances, was not bargained for ; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from bis motbcr, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was cleai'ly of a reading and speaking nature, be knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means tbe one tbing needful, or tlie chief thing. By far tbe cbief thing needful, and indeed the one tbing then as now, was, Tbat tbere should be in him tbe feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; tbat in his life's core there sbould dwell, spoken or silent, a lay of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies ; — not so much tbat he sbould pos- sess tbe art of speech, as that he sbould have something to speak ! And for tbat latter requisite tbe Priest also trained himself by apprenticeship, by actual attempt to practise, by manifold long-continued trial, of a devout and painful nature, such as his superiors prescribed to him. This, wben once judged satisfactory, procured him ordination ; and his grammar-learning, in tbe good times of priestbood, was very much of a parergon with him, as indeed in all times it is intrinsically quite in- significant in comparison. The young Noble again, for whom grammar school masters were first hired and high seminaries founded he too without tbese, or over and above these, had from immemorial time been used to learn his business by STUMP-ORATOR. 327 apprenticeship. The young Noble, before the school- master as after liim, went apprentice to some elder noble ; entered himself as page with some distin- guished earl or duke ; and here, serving upwards from step to step, under wise monition, learned his chivalries, his practice of arms and of courtesies, liis baronial duties and manners, and Avhat it would be- seem him to do and to be in the world, — by practi- cal attempt of his own, and example of one whose life was a daily concrete pattern for him. To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of liuman culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on occa- sion ; that he should carry a spiritual banknote pro- ducible on demand for Avhat of 'gold-bullion' he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, Avith wisdom, insight and he- roic worth already acquired for him, naturally de- manded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A val- uable superaddition of faculty: — and yet we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty ; it was but the tangible sign of what other faculties the man had jn the silent state : and many a rugged inarticulate chief of men, I can believe, was most enviably 'edu- cated,' who had not a Book on his premises; w^hose signature, a true sign-manual, was the stamp of his iron hand duly inked and clapt upon the parchment ; and whose speech in Parliament, like the growl of lions, did indeed convey his meaning, but would have torn Lindley Murray's nerves to pieces ! To 228 STUMP-ORATOR. siirh a one the schoolmaster adjusted himself very naturally in that manner ; as a man wanted for teach- ing grahimatical utterance ; the thing to utter being already there. The thing to utter, here was the grand point ! And perliaps this is the reason why among earnest nations, as among the Romans for example, the craft of the schoolmaster was held in little regard ; for indeed as mere teacher of grammar, of ciphering on the abacus and suchlike, how did he differ much from the dancing-master or fencing-mas- ter, or deserve much regard ? — Such was the rule in the ancient healthy times. Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of hu- man education ; that the human creature needs first of all to be educated not that he may speak, but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say ! If speech is the banknote for an inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honored. But if there is no inward capital ; if speech represent no real culture of the mind, but an imagi- nary culture ; no bullion, but the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such ? Alas, alas, said banknote is then a forged one ; passing freely cur- rent in the market ; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all the world, which are in^ad truth infallible, and of amount incalcu- lable. Few think of it at present ; but the truth remains forever so. In parliaments and other loud assemblages, your eloquent talk, o?«sunited from Na- ture and her facts, is taken as wisdom and the correct STUMP- ORATOR. 229 image of said facts : but Nature well knows what it is, Nature will not have it as such, and will reject your forged note one day, with huge costs. The foolish traders in the market pass it freely, nothing doubting, and rejoice in the dexterous execution of the piece ; and so it circulates from hand to hand, and from class to class ; gravitating ever downwards towards the practical class; till at last it reaches some poor ivorking hand, who can pass it no farther, but must take it to the bank to get bread with it, and there the answer is, " Unhappy caitiff, this note is forged. It does not mean performance and reality, in parliaments and elsewhere, for thy behoof; it means fallacious semblance of performance ; and thou, poor dupe, art thrown into the stocks on offering it here ! " Alas, alas, looking abroad over Irish difficulties, Mosaic sweating establishments, French barricades, and an anarchic Europe, is it not as if all the popula- tions of the world were rising, or had risen, into incendiary madness; unable longer to endure such an avalanche of forgeries, and of penalties in conse- quence, as had accumulated upon them ? The speaker is ' excellent ; ' the notes he does are beauti- ful ? Beautifully fit for the market, yes ; he is an excellent artist in his business ; — and the more excel- lent he is, the more is my desire to lay him by the heels, and fling him into the treadmill, that I might save the poor sweating tailors, French Sansculottes, and Irish Sanspotatoes, from bearing the smart ! For the smart must be borne ; some one must bear it, as sure as God lives. Every word of man is either a note or a forged-note: — have these eternal ski'^s 20 4.3^ STMIMP-OEATOR. forgotten to be in earnest, think you, because men go grinning like enchanted apes ? Foohsh souls, this now as of old is the unalterable law of your exist- ance. If you know the truth and do it, the Universe itself seconds you, bears you on to sure victory every- where : — and, observe, to sure defeat everywhere if you do not do the truth. And alas, if you Jaiow only the eloquent fallacious semblance of the truth, what chance is there of your ever doing it ? You will do something very different from «7, I think! — He who well considers, will find this same 'art of speech,' as we moderns have it. to be a truly astonishing product of the Ages ; and the longer he considers it, the more astonishing and alarming. I reckon it the saddest of all the curses that now lie heavy on us. With horror and amazement, one perceives that this much cele- brated -art,' so diligently practised in all corners of the world just now, is the chief destroyer of what- ever good is born to us (softly, swiftly shutting up all nascent good, as if under exhausted glass-receivers, there to choke and die); and the grand parent-manu- factory of evil to us, — as it were, the last finishing and varnishing workshop of all the Devil's ware that circulates under the sun. No Devil's sham is fit for the market till it have been polished and enamelled here ; this is the general assaying-house for such, where the artists examine and answer, "Fit for the market ; not fit ! " Words will not express what mis- chiefs the misuse of words has done, and is doing, in these heavyladen generations. Do you want a man not to practise what he believes, then encourage him to keep often speaking it in words STUMP-ORATOR. 231 Every time he speaks it, the tendency 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 wish his empty speech of what he believes, to become farther an insincere speech 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 achieve great thiiigs without any perform- ance ; that eloquent speech, whether performed or not, is admirable. My friends, eloquent unperformed speech, in Parliament or elsewhere, is horrible ! The eloquent man that delivers, in Parliament or else- where, a beautiful speech, and will perform nothing of it, but leaves it as if ah'eady performed, — what can you make of that man ? He has enrolled him- self among the Ignes Fatui and Children of the Wind ; means to serve, as beautifully illuminated Chinese Lantern, in that corps henceforth. I think, the serviceable thing you could do to that man, if permissible, would be a severe one : To clip off o. bit of his eloquent tongue, by way of penance and warn- ing ; another bit, if he again spoke without perform- ing ; and so again, till you had dipt the whole tongue away from him, — and were delivered, you and he, from at least one miserable mockery : " There, elo- quent friend, see now in silence if there be any re- deeming deed in thee ; of blasphemous wind-eloquence, at least, we shall have no more ! " How many pretty men have gone this road, escorted by the beautifullest marching music from all the ' public organs ; ' and have found at last that it ended — where? It is the, broad road, that leads direct to Limbo and the King- 232 STUMP-ORATOR. dom of the Inane. Gifted men, and once valiant na- tions, and as it were the whole world with one accord, are marching thither, in melodious trinmph, all the drums and hautboys giving out their cheerfullest ga-ira. It is the universal humor of the world just now. My friends, I am very sure you will arrivCi unless you halt ! — Considered as the last finish of education, or of human culture, worth and acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and even divine ; it is like the kin- dling of a Heaven's light to shov) us what a glorious world exists, and has perfected itself, in a man. But if no world extst in the man ; if nothing but con- tinents of empty vapor, of greedy self-conceits, com- monplace hearsays, and indistinct loomings of a sordid chaos exist in him, what will be the use of ' light ' to show us that ? Better a thousand times that such a man do not speak ; but keep his empty vapor and his sordid chaos to himself, hidden. to the utmost from all beholders. To look on that, can be good for no human beholder ; to look away from that, must be good. And if, by delusive semblances of rhetoric, logic, first-class degrees, and the aid of elocution-masters and parliamentary reporters, the poor proprietor of said chaos should be led to per- suade himself, and get others persuaded, — which it is the nature 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 STUMP-ORATOR. 233 price ill his generation ; that, round him, and his par- liament emnlonsly listening to him, as round some divine apple of gold set in a picture of silver, all the world should gather to adore : what is likely to be- come of him and the gathering world ? An apple of Sodom, set in the clusters of Gomorrah : that, little as he suspects it, is the definition of the poor chaoti- cally eloquent man, with his emulous parliament and miserable adoring world ! — Considered as the whole of education, or human culture, which it now is in our modern manners ; all apprenticeship except to mere handicraft having fallen obsolete, and the 'ed- ucated man ' being with us emphatically and exclu- sively the man that can speak well with tongue or pen, and astonish men by the quantities of speech he has heard (' tremendous reac/er,' 'walking encyclo- paedia,' and suchlike), — the Art of Speech is proba- bly definable in that case as the short summary of all the Black Ai'ts put together. But the Schoolmaster is secondary, an effect rather than a cause in this matter : what the Schoolmaster with his universities shall manage or attempt to teach will be ruled by what the Society with its practical industries is continually demanding that men should learn. We spoke once of vital lungs iov Society : and in fact this question always rises as the alpha and omega of social questions, What methods the Society has of summoning aloft into the high places, for its help and governance, the wisdom that 20* 234 STUMP-ORATOR. IS born to it in all places, and of course is horn chiefly in the more populous or lower places? For this, if you will consider it, expresses the ultimate available result, and net sum-total, of all the efforts, struggles and confused activities that go on in the Society ; and determines whether they are true and wise efforts, certain to be victorious, or false and foolish, certain to be futile, and to fall captive and caitiff. How do men rise in your Society? In all Societies, Turkey included, and I suppose Dahomey included, men do rise ; but the question of questions always is. What kind of men ? Men of noble gifts, or men of igno- ble ? It is the one or the other ; and a life-and-death inquiry which ! For in all places and all times, little as you may heed it. Nature most silently but most inexorably demands that it be the one and not the other. And you need not try to palm an ignoble sham upon her, and call it noble ; for she is a judge. And her ])enalties, as quiet as she looks, are terrible ; amounting to world-earthquakes, to anarchy and death everlasting ; and admit of no appeal ! — Surely England still flatters herself that she has lungs ; that she can still breathe a little ? Or is it that the poor creature, driven into mere blind indus- trialisms ; and as it were, gone pearl-diving this long while many fathoms deep, and tearing up the oyster- beds so as never creature did before, hardly knows, — so busy in the belly of the oyster-chaos, where is no thought of 'breathing,' — whether she has lungs or not ? Nations of a robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes take in a deal of breath before diving ; and live long, in the muddy deeps, without STUMP-ORATOH. 235 new breath : but they too ccme to need it at last, and will die if 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 born capable of doing it ; for his own sake, that his life be not choked and perverted, and his light from Heaven be not changed into lightning from the Other Place, — it is essential that there be such a career. The country that can offer no career in that case, is a doomed country ; nay it 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 ; and may consider itself as ap- pointed to expire, in frightful coughings of street musketry or otherwise, on a set day, and to be in the eye of law dead. In no country is there not some career, inviting to it either the noble Hero, or the tough Greek of the Lower Empire : which of the two do your careers invite? There is no question more important. The kind of careers you offer in countries still living, determines with perfect exact- ness the kind of the life that is in them, — whether it is natural blessed life, or galvanic accursed ditto, and likewise what degree of strength is in the same. Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is the silent or unlearned career of the Indus- trialisms, which are very many among us ; and there is the articulate or learned career of the three profes- sions, Medicine, Law (under which we may include Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, there- 2^6 STUMP-ORATOR. fore, will first liave to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or cannot ? True, all human talent, especially all deep talent, is a talent to do, and is intrinsically of silent nature ; inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which it is an incarnated fraction. All real talent, I fancy, would much rather, if it listened only to Nature's monitions, express itself in rhythmic facts, than in melodious words, which latter at best, where they are good for anything, are only a feeble echo and shadow or foreshadow of the former. But talents differ much in this of power to be silent ; and cir- cumstances, of position, opportunity and suchlike, modify them still more ; — and Nature's monitions, oftenest quite drowned in foreign hearsays, are by no means the only ones listened to in deciding ! — The Industrialisms are all of silent nature ; and some of them are heroic and eminently human ; others again we may call unheroic, not eminently human, beaver- ish rather, but still honest ; some are even vulpine^ altogether inhuman, and dishonest. Your born genius must make his choice. If a soul is born Avith divine intelligence, and has its lips touched with hallowed fire, in consecration for high enterprises under the sun, this young soul will find the question asked of him by England every hour and moment : '' Canst thou turn thy human in- telligence into the beaver sort, and make honest con- trivance, and accumulation of capital by it? If so, do it ; and avoid the vulpine kind, which I don't recommend. Honest triumphs in engineering and machinery await thee ; scrip awaits thee, eommerciaj STUMP-ORATOR. 237 successes, kingship in the counting-room, on the stock exchange; — thou shalt be the envy of surrounding flunkeys, and collect into a heap more gold than a drayhorse can draw." — "Gold, so much gold?" answers the ingenuous soul, with visions of the envy of surrounding flunkeys dawning on him ; and in very many cases decides that he will contract himself into beaverism, and with such a horse-draught of gold, emblem of a never-imagined success in beaver hero- ism, strike the siUTOunding flunkeys yellow. This is our common course ; this is in some sort open to every creature, Avhat we call the beaver career ; perhaps more open in England, taking in America too, than it ever was in any country before. And, truly, good consequences follow out of it : who can be blind to them ? Half of a most excellent and opulent result is realized to us in this way ; baleful only when it sets up (as too often now) for being the whole re- sult. A half- result which will be blessed and heavenly no soon as the other half is had, — namely wisdom to guide the first half. Let us honor all honest human power of contrivance in its degree. The beaver in- tellect, so long as it steadfastly refuses to be vulpine, and answers the tempter pointing out short routes to it with an honest '-'No, no," is truly respectable to mo : and many a highflying speaker and singer whom I have known, has appeared to me much less of a developed man than certain of my mill-owning, agri- cultural, commercial, mechanical, or otherwise indus- trial friends, who have held their peace all their days and gone on in the silent state. If a man can keep his intellec-t silent, and make it even into honest bea- 238 STUMP-ORATOR. verism, several veiy manful moralities, in clanger of wreck on other courses, may comport well with that, and give it a genuine and partly human character ; and I will (ell him, in these days he may do far worse with himself and his intellect than change it into beaverism, and make honest money with it. If in- deed he could become a heroic industrial, and have a life ' eminently human ! ' But that is not easy at present. Probably some ninety-nine out of every hundred of our gifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go this beaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is plentifully realized ; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadfully behindhand. But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn na- ture, be of vivid, impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to give itself sensible utterance, — I find that, in this case, the field it has in England is narrow to an extreme ; is perhaps narrower than ever oifered itself, for the like object, in this world before. Parliament, Church, Law : let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career, he finds among va- riable conditions one condition invariable, and ex- tremely surprising, That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue. For heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no account kept: — the English Nation does not need that silent kind, then, but only the talking kind ? Most astonishing. Of all the organs a man has, there is none held in account, it would appear, but the tongue he uses for talking. Premiership, woolsack, mitre, and quasi-crown : all is attainable if you can talk with due ability. Every- STUMP- ORATOR. 235 Avhere your proofshot is to be a well-fired volley of talk. Contrive to talk well, you Avill get to Heaven, the modern Heaven of the English. Do not talk well, only work well, and heroically hold your peace, you have no chance whatever to get thither ; with your utmost industry you may get to Threadneedle Street, and accumulate more gold than a dray-horse can draw. Is not this a very wonderful arrangement ? I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks : of human competitors, high aspirants, climbing heaven- ward on the soaped pole; seizing the soaped pig ; and clutching with deft 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 talk is probably as strange a competition as any. And the question rises, Whether certain of these other feats, or perhaps an alternation of all of 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 tough- ness, which is a quality I respect, with more or less expenditure of falsity and astucity superadded, which I entirely condemn. Toughness plus astucity : — perhaps a simple wooden mast set up in Palace-Yard, well soaped and duly presided over, might be the honester method ? Such a method as this by trial of talk, for filling your chief offices in Church ano State, v/as perhaps never heard of in the solar systen' before. You are quite used to it, my poor friend and nearly dead by the consequences of it : but ir 240 STU3IP- ORATOR. the other Planets, as in other epochs of your own Planet it would have done had you proposed it, the thing awakens incredulous amazement, world-wide Olympic laughter, which ends in tempestuous hoot- iiigs, in tears and horror ! My friend, if you can, as heretofore this good while, find nobody to take care of your aflairs but the expertest talker, it is all over with your affairs and you. Talk never yet could guide any man's or nation's affairs ; nor will it yours, except towards the Limbiis Patrum, where all talk, except a very select kind of it, lodges at last. Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half- articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be, — the profession of the Human Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again ! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human : but in practice most unluckily at present, we find it too become in good part beaverish ; yielding a money- result alone. And what of it is not beaverish, — does not that too go mainly to ingenious talking, pub- lishing of yourself, ingratiatuig of yourself; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and alas a partly STUMP-OKATOR. 241 vulpine ditto ; — making the once sacred 'larpoj, or Human Healer, more impossible for us than ever ! Angry basilisks watch at the gates of Law and Church just now ; and strike a sad damp into tlie nobler of the young aspirants. Hard bonds are offered you to sign ; as it were, a solemn engagement to con- stitute yourself an impostor, before ever entering ; to declare your belief in incredibilities, — your determi-^ nation, in short, to take ,Chaos for Cosmos, and Satan for the Lord of things, if he come with money in his pockets, and horsehair and bombazine decently wrapt about him. Fatal preliminaries, which deter many an ingenuous young soul, and send him back from the threshold, and I hope will deter ever more. But if you do enter, the condition is well known : '' Talk ; who can talk best here ? His shall be the mouth of gold, and the purse of gold ; and with my /juVpa(once the head-dress of unfortunate-females, I am told) shall his sacred temples be begirt." Ingenuous souls, unless forced to it, do now much shudder at the threshold of both these careers, and not a few desperately turn back into the wilderness rather, to front a very rude fortune, and be devoured by wild beasts as is likeliest. But as to Parliament, again, and its eligibility if attainable, there is yet no ques- tion anywhere : the ingenuous soul, if possessed of money capital enough, is predestined by the parental and all manner of monitors to that career of talk ; and accepts it with alacrity and clearness of heart, doubt ful only whether he shall be able to make a speech Courage, my brave young fellow. If you can climb a soaped pole of any kind, you will certainly be able 242 STUMP-ORATOR. to make a speech. All mortals have a tongue ; and carry on some jumble, if not of thought, yet of stuf!* which they could talk. The weakest of animals has got a cry in it, and can give voice before dying. If you are tough enough, bent upon it -desperately enough, I engage you shall make a speech; — but whether that will be the way to Heaven for you, I do not engage. These, then, are our two careers for genius : mute Industrialism, which can seldom become very human, but remains beaverish mainly : and the three Profes- sions named learned, — that is to say, able to talk. For the heroic or higher kinds of human intellect, in the silent state, there is not the smallest inquiry any- where : apparently, a thing not wanted in this coun- try at present. What the supply may be I cannot inform M'Crowdy ; but the market-demand, he may himself see, is nil. These are our three professions that require human intellect in part or whole, not able to do with mere beaverish ; and such a part does the gift of talk play in one and all of them. What- soever is not beaverish seems to go forth in the shape of talk. To such length is human intellect wasted or suppressed in this world ! If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parlia- ment, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot alto- gether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money, — what becomes of him in such case, a'hich is naturally the case of very many, and eve** STU3IP-0RAT0R. 243 of more ? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one : the outlet of Literature, of trying to write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by elo- quent talking, let him try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here happily, having three fingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mortals : in this career there is happily no public impediment that can turn him back ; nothing but private starvation, — which is itself a/;/2"5 or kind of goal, — can pretend to hinder a British man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, and wringing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee ; No talent is in thee." To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains ; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has. A crowded portal this of Literature, accordingly ! The haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and alas also of expatriated vanities and prurient imbecilities : here do the windy aspirations, foiled activities, foolish ambitions, and frustrate human energies reduced to the vocable condition, fly as to the one refuge left ; and the Republic of Letters increases in population at a faster rate than even the Republic of America. The strangest regiment in her Majesty's service, this of the Soldiers of Literature: — would your Lord- ship much like to march through Coventry with them ? The immortal gods are there (quite irrecog- nizable under these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets j — an extremely miscellaneous regi- 244 STUMP-ORATOR. ment. In fact the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of dis- charged playactors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad-singers ; and marches not as a regiment, but as a boundless canaille, — without drill, uniform, captaincy or billet ; with huge over- proportion of drummers ; you would say, a regi- ment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket to be seen in it, — more a canaille than a regiment. Canaille of all the loud-sounding levities, and general winnowings of Chaos, marching through the world in a most ominous manner; proclaiming, audibly if you have ears : " Twelfth hour of the Night ; ancient graves yawning ; pale clammy Pusey- isms screeching in their winding-sheets ; owls busy in the City regions ; many goblins abroad ! Awake ye living ; dream no more ; arise to judgment ! Cha- os and Gehenna are broken loose ; the Devil with his Bedlams must be flung in chains again, an.d the Last of the Days is about to dawn ! " Such is Literature to the reflective soul at this moment. But what now concerns us most is the circumstance that here too the demand is. Vocables, still vocables. In all appointed courses of activity and paved careers for human genius, and in this unpaved, unappointed, broadest career of Literature, broad way that leadeth to destruction 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 with dexterous acceptability, there is for human worth and faculty, in our England of the Nineteenth STUMP-OEATOR. - 245 Century, that one method of emergence and no other. Silence, you would say, means annihilation for the Englishman of the Nineteenth Century. The worth that has not spoken itself, is not ; or is poten- tially only, as if it were not. Vox is the God of this Universe. If you have human intellect, it avails nothing unless you either 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, much may be gathered by talk; without talk, of the human sort nothing. Is Society become wholly a bag of wind, then, balkisted by guineas? Are our interests in it as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal? — In Army or Navy, when unhappily we have war on hand, there is, almost against our will, some kind of demand for certain of the silent talents. But in peace, that too passes into mere demand of the ostentations, of the pipeclays and the blank cartridges; and, — except that Naval men are occasionally, on long voyages, forced to hold their tongue, and converse with the dumb elements, and illimitable oceans, that moan and rave there with- out you and within you, which is a great advantage to the Naval man, — our poor United Services have to make conversational windbags and ostentational paper- lanterns of themselves, or do worse, even as the others. My friends, must I assert, then, what surely all men know, though all men seem to have forgotten it. That in the learned professions as in the unlearned, and in 21* 246 STUr.IP- ORATOR. human things throughout, in every place and in every time, the true function of intellect is not that of talk- ing, but of understanding and discerning with a view to perfor'ming ! An intellect may easily talk too much, and perform too little. Gradually, if it get into the noxious habit of talk, there will less and less performance come of it, talk being so delightfully handy in comparison with work; and at last there will no work, or thought of work, be got from it at all. Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing; — sometimes it is worth infi- nitely less than nothing ; and becomes, little con- scious of playing such a fatal part, the general sum- mary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the Posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world ! Would you discover the Atro- pos of Human Virtue*; the sure Destroyer, 'by pain- less extinction,' of human Veracities, Performances, and Capabilities to perform or to be veracious, — it is this, you have it here. Unwise talk is matchless in unwisdom. Unwiso work, if it but persist, is everywhere struggling towards correction, and restoration to health ; for it is still in contact with Nature, and all Nature incessantly contradicts it, and will heal it or annihilate it: not so with unwise talk, which addresses itself, regardless of veridical Nature, to the universal suffrages ; and can if it be dexterous, find harbor there till all the suf- frages are bankrupt and gone to Houndsditch, Nature not interfering with her protest till then. False speech, definable as the acme of unwise speech, is capable, as we already said, of becoming the falsest of all things. Falsest of all things : — and whither STUMP-ORATOR. 247 will the general deluge of that, in Parliament and Synagoguej in Book and Broadside, cany yon and your aifairs, my friend, when once they are embarked on it as now ? Parliament, Paj^Uamentumj is by express appoint- ment the Talking Apparatus; yet not in Parliament either is the essential function, by any means, talk. Not to speak your opinion well, but to have -a good and just opinion worth speaking, — for every Parlia- ment, as for every man, this latter is the point. Con- trive to have a true opinion, you will get it told in some way, better or worse ; and it will be a blessing to all creatures. 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 every- where in this Universe, your one salvation is, That you can discern with just insight, and follow with noble valor, what the law of the case before you is, what the appointment of the Maker in regard to it has been. Get this out of one man, you are saved ; fail to get this out of the most august Parliament wrapt in the sheepskins of a thousand years, you are lost, — your Parliament, and you, and all your sheep- skins are lost. Beautiful talk is by no means the most pressing v/ant in Parliament! We have had some reasonable modicum of talk in Parliament. What talk has done for us in Parliament, and is now doing, the dullest of us at length begins to see ! 248 STUMP- ORATOR. Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to business ; of the training an Official Man gets in this school of argument and talk. He is here inured to patience, tolerance; sees what is what in tlie Nation and in the Nation's Government ; attains official knowledge, official courtesy and manners; — in short, is polished at all points into official articulation, and here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to be a Governor of men. So it is said. — Doubtless, I think, he will see and snifer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things; — he will, with what eyes he has, gradually see Parliament itself, for one thing: what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, ever bab- bling yet inarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly one of the strangest under the sun just now): which doubtless, if he have in view to get measures 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, or Chief of Doers, here in this element of talk ; as to that I confess the fatallest doubts, or rather alas I have no doubt ! Alas, it is our fatallest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently requiring to be altered, Tiiat no British man can attain to be a Statesman, or Chief of Work- ers, till he has first proved himself a Chief of Talkers ; which mode of trial for a Worker, is it not precisely of all the trials you could set him upon, the falsest and unfairest? Nay, I doubt much you are not likely ever to meet the fittest material for a Statesman, or Chief of Workers, in such an element as that. Your potential Chief of Workers, will he come there at all, to try STUMP-ORATOR. 249 whether he can talk? Your poor tenpound fran- chisers and electoral world generally, in love with eloquent talk, 'are they the likeliest to discern what man it is that has worlds of silent work in him ? No. Or is such a man, even if born in the due rank for it, the likeliest to present himself, and court their most sweet voices? Again, no. The Age thc^t admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. Nobody, or hardly any- body, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind ; a Human Doer especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate of all Nature's facts? Nobody can recognize him: till once he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has been articulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To the worshipper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct from Heaven, — how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfor- tunate ? Not except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent, — which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no great haste to do. Wisdom, the divine message which every soul of man brings into this world ; the divine prophecy of what the new man has got the new and peculiar capability to do, is intrinsically of silent nature. It cannot at once, or completely at all, be read off in words ; for it is written in abstruse facts, of endow- ment, position, desire, opportunity, granted to the man ; — interprets itself in presentiments, vague 250 STUMP-ORATOR. 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 a man much tempted to publish the secret of his soul in words. Words, if he have a secret, will be forever inadequate to it. Words do but disturb the real answer of fact which could be given to it ; distin'b, obstruct, and will in the end abolish, and render im- possible, said answer. No grand Doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings. William the Silent spoke himself best in a country liberated ; Oliver Cromwell did not shine in rhetoric ; Goethe, when he had but a book in view, found that he must say nothing even of that, if was to succeed with him. Then as to politeness, and breeding to business. An official man must be bred to business ; of course he must: and not for essence only, but even for the manners of office he requires breeding. Besides his intrinsic faculty, 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 : tliis constitutes their one intrinsic qualification for office; — this is their one advantage in the New Downing Street projected for this New Era; and it will not go for much in that Institution. One advan- tage, or temporary advantage; against which there are so many counterbalances. It is the indispensable preliminary for office, but by no means the complete outfit, — a miserable outfit where there is nothing farther. STUMP- ORATOR. 251 Will your Lordship give me leave to say that, prac- tically, the intrinsic qualities will presuppose these preliminaries too, but by no means vice versa. That, on the whole, if you have got the intrinsic qualities, you have got everything, and the preliminaries will prove attainable ; but that 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 a dignified manner ; a man of real understanding and insight will get to know, as the fruit of his'very first study, what the laws of his situation are, and will conform to these. Rough old Samuel Johnson, blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often was, defined himself, justly withal, as a polite man : a noble manful attitude of soul is his ; a clear, true and loyal sense of what others are, and what he himself is, shines through the rugged coating of him ; comes out as grave deep rhythmus when his King honors him, and he will not ' bandy compliments with his King; ' — is traceable too in his indignant trampling down of the Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made in- solences, and contradictions of sinners ; which may be called his revoliiliouarij movements, hard and peremp- tory by the law of them ; these could not be soft like his constitutional ones, when men and kings took him for somewhat like the thing he was. Given a noble man, I think your Lordship may expect by and by a polite man. No ' politer' man was to be found in Britain than the rustic Robert Burns: high duch- esses were captivated with the chivalrous ways of the man ; recognized that here was the true chivalry, and divnie nobleness of bearing, — as indeed they well 252 RTrTMP-OSATOR. might, now when the Peasant God and Norse Thor had come down among them again ! Ciiivah-y this, if not as they do chivalry in Drury Lane or West- End drawing rooms, yet as they do it in Valhalla and the General Assembly of the Gods. For indeed, who inve7ited chivalry, politeness, or anything that is noble and melodious and beautiful among us, except precisely the like of Johnson and of Burns ? The select few who in the generations of this world were wise and valiant, they in spite of all the tremendous majority of blockheads and slothful belly-worshippers, and noisy ugly persons, 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 them a chance ! — Nor is it as a school of human culture, for this or for any other grace or gift, that Parliament will be found first-rate or indispensable. As experience in the river is indispensable to the ferryman, so is knowledge of his Parliament to the British Peel or Chatham ; — so was knowledge of the CEil-de-Boeuf to the French Choiseul. Where and how said river, whether Par- liament with Wilkeses or (Eil-de-Boeuf with Pompa- dours, can be waded, boated, swum ; how the miscel- laneous cargoes, 'measures,' so-called, can be got across it, according to their kinds, and landed alive on the hither side as facts : — we have all of us our ferries in this world ; and must know the river and its ways, or get drowned some day ! In that sense, practice in Parliament is indispensable to the British Statesman ; but not in any other sense. A school; too, of manners and of several other STUMP-ORATOR. 253 things, the Parliament will doubtless be to the aspi- rant Statesman ; a school better or worse ; — as the CEil-de-Boeuf likewise was, and as all scenes where men work or live are sure to be. Especially where many men work together, the very rubbing against one another will grind and polish off their angularities into roundness, into ' politeness ' after a sort ; and the official man, place him how you may, will never want for schooling, of extremely various kinds. A first- rate school one cannot call this Parliament for him ; — I fear to say what rate at present ! In so far as it teaches him vigilance, patience, courage, toughness of lungs or of soul, and skill in any kind of swim- ming, it is a good school. In so far as it forces him to speak where Nature orders silence ; and even, lest all the world should learn his secret (which often enough would kill his secret, and little profit the world), forces him to speak falsities, vague ambigui- ties, 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 chal- lenge the CEil-de-Boeuf to match it in badness. Parliament will train your men to the manners re- quired of a statesman ; but in a much less degree to the intrinsic functions of one. To these latter, it is capable of m/straining as nothing else can. Parlia- ment will 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, espe- cially in constitutional countries, is something; — and yet in all countries, constitutional ones too, it is in- 22 254 STUMP-ORATOR. trinsically nothing, probably even less. For it is not the function of any mortal, in Downing Street or elsewhere here below, to wag the tongue of him, and make it appear that he has done work : but to wag some quite other organs of him, and to do work ; there is no danger of his work's appearing by and by. Such an accomplishment, even in constitutional coun- tries, I grieve to say, may become much less than nothing. Have you at all computed how much less ? The human creature who has once given way to sat- isfying himself with 'appearances,' to seeking his salvation in 'appearances,' the moral life of such human creature is rapidly bleeding out of him. De~ pend upon it, Beelzebub, Satan, or however you may name the too authentic Genius of Eternal Death, has got that human creature in his claws. By and by you will have a dead parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled away without return ! Such parliamentary bagpipes I myself have heard play tunes, much to the satisfaction of the people. E\^ery tune lies within their compass ; and their mind (for they still call it mind) is ready as a hurdygurdy on turning of the handle: "My Lords, this question now before the House " Ye Heavens, O ye divine Silences, was there in the womb of Chaos, then, such a product, liable to be evoked by human art, as that same ? While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes en- lightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey, — I have sat with reflections too ghastly to he uttered. A poor human creature and learned friend, once possessed of many fine gifts, STUMP-ORATOR. 255 possessed of intellect, veracity, and manful conviction on a variety of objects, has he now lost all that ; — ^converted all that into a glistering phosphorescence which can show itself on the outside ; while within, all is dead, chaotic, dark ; a painted sepulchre full of dead men's bones ! Discernment, knowledge, intel- lect, in the human sense of the words, this man has now none. His opinion you do not ask on any mat- ter : on the matter he has no opinion, judgment, or insight ; only on what may be said about the matter, how it may be argued of, what tune may be played upon it to enlighten the eyes of the Fourth Estate. Such a soul, though to the eye he still keeps tum- bling about in the Parliamentary element, and makes 'motions,' and passes bills, for aught I kiiow, — are we to define him as a livinf^ one, or as a dead ? Par- tridge the Almanac-maker, whose ' publications ' still regularly appear, is known to be dead ! The dog that was drowned last summer, and that floats up and down 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 at length, 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 the moment); and reflect, with a painful oppression of nose and imagination, on certain completed professors of par- liamentary eloquence in modern times. Dead long since, but not resting ; daily doing motions in that Westminster region still, — daily from Yauxhall to Blackfriars, and back again ; and cannot get away at 256 STUMP-ORATOR. all ! Daily (from Newspaper or river steamer) you may see him at some point of his fated course, hover- ing ill the eddies, stranded in the ooze, or rapidly progressing with flood or ebb ; and daily the odor of him is getting more intolerable ; daily the condition of him appeals more tragically to gods and men. Nature admits no lie ; most men profess to be aware of this, but few in any measure lay it to heart. Except in the departments of mere material manipu- lation, it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite flourish of rhetoric. What is a lie ? The question is worth asking, once and away, by the practical English mind. A voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands, as it has occurred and will proceed to develop itself: this clearly, if adopted by any man, will so far forth mislead him in all practical dealing with the fact ; till he cast that statement out of him, and re- ject it as an unclean poisonous thing, he can have no success in dealing v/ith the fact. If such spoken divergence from the truth be involuntary, we lament it as a misfortune ; and are entitled, at least the speaker of it is, to lament it extremely as the most palpable of aU misfortunes, as the indubitablest losing of his way, and turning aside from the goal instead of pressing towards it, in the race set before him. If the divergence is voluntary, — there superadds itself to our sorrow a just indignation: we call the volun- tary spoken divergence a lie, and justly abhor it as the essence of human treason and baseness, the desertion STUMP-ORATOR. 25 of a man to the Enemy of men against himself an(' his brethren. A lost deserter; who has gone over to the Enemy, called Satan ; and cannot hut be lost ip the adventure ! Such is every liar with the tongne ; and snch in all nations is he, at all epochs, considered. Men pnll his nose, and kick him ont of doors ; and by peremptory expressive methods signify that they can and will have no trade with him. Snch is spoken divergence from the fact ; so fares it with the prac- tiser of that sad art. But have we well considered a divergence in thought from what is the fact? Have we considered the man whose very thought is a lie to him and to ns ! He too is a frightful man ; repeating abont this Universe on every hand what is not, and driven to repeat it; the sure herald of ruin to all that follow him, that know with his knowledge ! And would you learn how to get a mendacious thought, there is no surer recipe than carrying a loose tongue. The lying thought, you already either have it, or will soon 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, in any sense, 'think?' All his thoughts and imaginations, if they extend beyond mere beaverisms, astucities and sensualisms, are false, incomplete, perverse, untrue even to himself. He has become a false mirror of this Universe ; not a small mirror only, but a crooked, bedimmed and utterly deranged one. But all loose tongues too are akin to lying ones; are insincere at the best, and go rattling with little meaning ; the thought lying lan- guid at a great distance behind them, if thought there 22* STUMP-ORATOR. be behind them at all. Gradually there will be none or little ! How can the thought of such a man, what he calls thought, be other than false ? Alas, the palpable liar with his tongue does at least know that he is lying, and has or might have some faint vestige of remorse and chajice of amendment ; but the impalpable liar, whose tongue articulates mere accepted commonplaces, cants and babblement, which means only " Admire m.e, call me an excellent stump- orator! " — of him what hope is there ? His thought, what thought he had, lies dormant, inspired only to invent vocables and plausibilities; while the tongue goes so glib, the thought is absent, gone a-woolgather- ing ; getting itself drugged with the applausive 'Hear, hear!' — what will become of such a man? His idle thought 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 putridity and phos- phorescence henceforth. Whatsoever is in quest of ruin, let him with 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 of a Thing as it lies in Nature, there is, one would suppose, a sufficient interval ! Consider it, — aud what other intervals we introduce ! The faithfullest, most glowing word of a man is but an imperfect image of the thought, such as it is, that dwells within him ; his best word will never but with error convey his thought to other minds : and then between Jiis poor thought and Nature's Fact, which is the Thought of the Eternal, there may be supposed to lie some discrepancies, some shortcomings ! Speak STUMP-ORATOR. 259 your sincerest, think your wisest, there is still a great gulf between yon and the fact. And now, do not speak your sincerest, and, what will inevitably follow out of that, do not think your wisest, but think only your plausiblest, your showiest for parliamentary pur- poses, where will you land with that guidance? — I invite the British Parliament, and all the Parliament- ary and other Electors of Great Britain, to reflect on this till they have well understood it ; and then to ask, each of himself, What probably the horoscopes of the British Parliament, at this epoch of World- History, may be ? — Fail, by any sin or any misfortune, to discover what the truth of the fact is, you are lost so far as that fact goes ! If your thought do not image truly but do image falsely the fact, you will vainly try to v/ork upon the fact. The fact will not obey you, the fact will silently resist you ; and ever, with silent in- vincibility, will go on resisting you, till you do get to image it truly instead of falsely. No help for you whtitever, except in attaining to a true image of the fact. Needless to vote a false image true ; vote it, revote it by overwhelming majorities, by jubilant unanimities and universalities ; read it thrice or three hundred times, pass acts of parliament upon it till the Statute-book can hold no more, — it helps not a whit : the thing is not so, the thing is otherwise than so ; and Adam's whole Posterity, voting daily on it till the world finish, will not alter it a jot. Can the sub- limest sanhedrim, constitutional parliament, or other Collective Wisdom of the world, persuade fire not to burn, sulphuric acid to be sweet milk, or the Moon to 260 STUMP-ORATOR. become green cheese? The fact is much the re- verse : — and even the Constitutional British Parlia- ment abstains from such arduous attempts as tliese latter in the voting line; and leaves the multiplica- tion-table, the chemical, mechanical and other quali- ties of material substances to take their own course ; being aware that voting and perorating, and reporting in Hansard, will not in the least alter any of these. Which is indisputably wise of the British Parlia- ment. Unfortunately the British Parliament does not, at present, quite know that all manner of things and re- lations of things, spiritual equally with material, all manner of qualities, entities, existences whatsoever, in this strange visible and invisible Universe, are equally inflexible of nature ; that they vv^ill, one and all, with precisely the same obstinacy, continue to obey their own law, not our law ; deaf as the adder to all charm of parliamentary eloquence, and of voting never so often repeated ; silently, but inflexibly and forever- more, declining to change themselves, even as sulphu- ric acid declines to become sweet milk, though you vote so to the end of the world. This, it sometimes seems to me, is not quite sufiiciently laid hold of by the British and other Parliaments just at present. Which surely is a great misfortune to said Parliaments! For, it would appear, the grand point, after all consti- tutional improvements, and such wagging of wigs in Westminster as there has been, is precisely what it was before any constitution was yet heard of, or the first official whig had budded out of nothing : namely, to ascertain what the truth of your question, in Nature, STUMP-ORATOR. 261 real.yis! Yerily so. In this time and place, as in all past and in all future times and places. To-day in St. Stephen's, where constitutional, philanthropical, and other great things lie in the mortarkit ; even as on the Plain of Shinar long ago, where a certain Tower, likewise of a very philanthropic nature, indeed one of the desirablest towers I ever heard 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, by the silent intimation of your own eye- sight and understanding given you direct out of Heav- en, and more sacred to you than any thing earthly, and than all things earthly, — a correct image of the fact in question, as God and Nature have made it: that is the one thing needful ; with that it shall be well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact. Get, by the sublimest constitutional methods, belauded by all the world, an incorrect image of the fact : so shall it be other than well with you ; so shall you have laud from able-editors and vociferous masses of mistaken human creatures ; and from the Nature's Fact, continuing quite silently the same as it was, contradiction, and that only. What else? Will Nature change, or sulphuric acid become sweet milk, for the noise of vociferous blockheads? Sm*ely not. Nature, I assure you, has not the smallest intention of doing so. On the contrary. Nature keeps silently a most exact Savings-bank, and official register correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor and Creditor, in respect to sue and all of us j silently marks down, Creditor by 262 STTJMP-ORATOR. such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism , Debtor to such a loud bhistery bhuider, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that, — Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (for this is Fate that is writing); and at the end of the account you will have it all to pay, my friend; there is the rub! Not the infinitesimallest fraction of a farthing but will be found marked there, for you and against you ; and with the due rate of interest you will have to pay it, neatly, completely, as sure as you are alive. You will have to pay it even in money if you live : — and, poor slave, do you think there is no payment but in money ? There is a pay- ment which Nature rigorously exacts of men, and also of Nations, and this I think when her wrath is stern- est, in the shape of dooming you to possess money. To possess it ; to have your bloated vanities fostered into monstrosity by it, your foul passions blown into explosion by it, your heart and perhaps your very stomach mined with intoxication by it ; your poor life and all its manful activities stunned into frenzy and comatose sleep by it, — in one word, as the old Prophets said, your soul forever lost by it. Your soul ; so that, through the Eternities, you shall have no soul, or manful trace of ever having had a soul ; but only, for certain fleeting moments, shall have had a money- bag, and have given soul and heart and (frightful ler still) stomach itself in fatal exchange for the same. You wretched mortal, stumbling about in a God's Temple, and thinking it a brutal Cookery-shop ! Nature, when her scorn of a slave is divinest, and STUMP-OKATOR. 253 blazes like the blinding lightning against his slave- hood, often enough flings hiin a bag of mon^y, silently saying: "That! Away; thy doom is that!" — For no man, and for no body or biggest multitude of men, has Nature favor, if they part company with her facts and her. Excellent stump-orator ; eloquent parliamentary dead-dog, making motions, passing bills ; reported in the morning Newspapers, and reputed the ' best speaker going ? ' From the Universe of Fact he has turned himself away ; he is gone into partnership with the Universe of Phantasm ; finds it profitablest to deal in forged-notes, while the foolish shopkeepers will accept them. Nature for such a man, and for Nations that follow such, has her patibulary forks, and prisons of death everlasting: — dost thou doubt it? Unhappy mortal. Nature otherwise were herself a Chaos and no Cosmos. Nature was not made by an Impostor ; not she, I think, rife as they are ! — In fact, by money or otherwise, to the uttermost fraction of a calculable and incalculable value, we have, each one of us, to settle the exact balance in the abcvesaid Savings-bank, or official register kept by Nature : Creditor by the quantity of veracities we have done, Debtor by the quantity of falsities and errors ; there is not, by any conceivable device, the faintest hope of escape from that issue for one of 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 spread over the world, we hear some dim mumblenient of an assertion that such -264 STUMP-ORATOR. is still, what it was always and will forever be, the fact : but meseems it has terribly fallen out of memory nevertheless; and, from Dan to Beersheba, one in vain looks out for a man that really in his heart believes it. In his heart he believes, as we perceive, that scrip will yield dividends : but that Heaven too has an office of account, and unerringly marks down, against us or for us, whatsoever thing we do or say or think, and treasures up the same in regard to every creature, — this I do not so well perceive that he believes. Poor blockhead, no : he reckons that all payment is in money, or approximately representable by money ; finds money go a strange course ; disbelieves the par- son and his Day of Judgment ; discerns not that there is any judgment except in the small or big debt court ; and lives (for the present) on that strange footing in this Universe. The unhappy mortal, what is the use of his 'civilizations' and his 'useful knowledges,' if he have forgotten that beginning of human knowl- edge ; the earliest perception of the awakened human soul in this world ; the first dictate of Heaven's in- spiration to all men? I cannot account him a man any more ; but only a kind of human beaver, who has acquired the art of ciphering. He lives without rush- ing hourly towards suicide, because his soul, with all its noble aspirations and imaginations, is sunk at the bottom of his stomach, and lies torpid there, unaspir- ing, unimagining, unconsidering, as if it were the vital principle of a mere /owrfooted beaver. A soul of a man, appointed for spinning cotton and making money, or alas for merely shooting grouse and gather- ing rent ; to whom Eternity and Immortality, and all STUMP-ORATOR. 265 human Noblenesses, and divine Facts that did not tell upon the stock-exchange, were meaningless fables, empty as the inarticulate wind. He will recover out of that persuasion one day, or be ground to powder. I believe ! — To such a pass, by our beaverisms and our mam- monisms ; by canting of 'prevenient grace' every- where, and so boarding and lodging our poor souls upon supervenient moonshine everywhere, for cen- turies long ; by our sordid stupidities and our idle babblings; through faith in the divine Stump-Orator, and Constitutional Palaver, or august Sanhedrim of Orators, — have men and Nations been reduced, in this sad epoch ! I cannot call them happy Nations; I must call them Nations like to perish ; Nations that will either begin to recover, or else soon die. Re- covery is to be hoped ; — yes, since there is in Nature an Almighty Beneficence, and His voice, divinely terrible, can be heard in the world-whirlwind now, even as from of old and forevermore. Recovery, or else destruction and annihilation, is very certain ; and the crisis, too, comes rapidly on : but by Stump- Orator and Constitutional Palaver, however perfected, my hopes of recovery have long vanished. Not by them, I should imagine, but by something far the /^reverse of them, shall we return to truth and God ! — I tell you, the ignoble intellect cannot think the truth, even within its own limits, and when it seriously tries ! And of the ignoble intellect that does not seriously try, and has even reached the ' ignobleness' of seriously trying the reverse, and of lying with its very tongue, what are we to expect ? It is frightful 23 2GQ STUMP-ORATOR. to consider. Sincere wise speech is but an imperfect corollary, and insignificant onter manifestation, of sincere wise thongiit. He whose very tongue utters falsities, what has his heart long been doing ? The thought of his heart is not its wisest, not even its wisest; it is its foolishest ; — and even of that we have a false and fooHsh copy. And it is Nature's Fact, or the Thought of the Eternal, which we Avant to arrive at in regard to the matter, — which if we do not arrive at, we shall not save the matter, we shall drive the matter into shipwreck ! The practice of modern Parliaments, with reporters sitting among them, and twenty-seven millions most- ly fools listening to them, fills me with amazement. In regard to no thing, or fact as God and Nature iiave made it, can you get so much as the real thought of any honorable head, — even so far as it, the said honor- able head, still has capacity of thought. What the hon- orable gentleman's wisest thought is or would hav^e been, had he led from birth a life of piety and ear- nest veracity and heroic virtue, you, and he himself poor deep-sunk creature, vainly conjecture as from immense dim distances, far in the rear of what he is led to sai/. And again, far in the rear of what his thought is, — surely long infinitudes beyond all /le could ever think, — lies the Thought of God Al- mighty, 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, actual bewildered, falsified, vague surmise or quasi-thought, even this is not given you ; but only some falsified copy of this, such as he fancies may suit the reporters and twenty- fcTur-ir-cRATcrv. 267 seven millions mostly fools. And upon that latter yon are to act ; with what success, do you ex- pect ? That is the thought yo'j are to take for the Thought of the Eternal ]Mind, — that double-distilled falsity of a blockheadisni from one who is false even as a blockhead ! Do I make myself plain to Mr. Peter's understand- ing ? Perhaps it will surprise him less that parlia- mentary eloquence excites more wonder than admira- tion in me ; that the fate of countries governed by that sublime alchemy does not appear the hopefullest just now. Not by that method, I should apprehend, will the Heavens be scaled and the Earth vanquished ; not by that, but by another. A benevolent man once proposed to me, but with- out pointing out the methods how, this plan of reform for our benighted world : To cut from one generation, whether the current one or the next, all the tougues away, prohibiting Literature too ; and appoint a^ least one generation to pass its life in silence. '' There, thou one blessed generation, from the vain jargon of babble thou art beneficently freed. Whatsoever of truth, traditionary or original, thy own god-given intellect shall point out to thee as true, that thou Avilt go and do. In doiug of it there will be a verdict for thee ; if a verdict of True, thou wilt hold by it, and ever again do it ; if of Untrue, thou wilt never try it more, but be eternally delivered from it. To do aught because the vain hearsays order thee, and the big clamors of the sanhedrim of fools, is not thy lot, — what worlds of misery are ■p-rtr> J •^OT?. 23S srL-.iP-o spared thee ! Nature's voice heard '.n thy own inner beiiis. and the sacred Conimandnient of thy Maker: these shall be thy guidances, thou happy tongueless generation. What is good and beautiful thou shalt know ; not merely what is said to be so. Not to talk of "by doings, and become tlie envy of sur- rounding flunkeys, but to taste of the fruit of thy doings themselves, is thine. What the Eternal Laws wiU sanction for thee, do ; what the Froth Gospels and multitudinous long-eared Hearsays never so loudly bid, all this is already chaff for thee, — drifting rapidly along, thou knowest whitherward, on the eternal winds." Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the chaff might be winnowed out of every man, and out of ail human things; and ninety-nine hundredths of our whole big universe, spiritual and practical, might blow itself av/ay, as mere torrents of chaff ; — whole trade-winds of chaff, many miles deep, rushing continually with the voice of whirlwinds towards a certain Fire, which knows how to deal with it ! Ninety-nine hundredths blown away ; all the lies blown away, and some skeleton of a spiritual and practical universe left standitig for us which were true : O Heavens, is it forever impossible, then ? By a generation that had no 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 STUMP-ORATOR. 239 Truly, it is little known at present, and ought forthwith to become better known, wliat ruin to all nobleness and fruitfulness and blessedness in the genuis of a poor mortal you generally brin;^ about, b\' orderin^' hnn to speak, to do all things with a view to their being seen I Few good and frnilful things ever were done, or could be done, on those terms. Silence, silence ; and be distant, ye profane, with your jargonings and superficial babblements, when a man has any thing to do! Eye-service, — dost thou know what that is, poor England? — eye-service is all the man can do in these sad circumstances ; groves to be all he has the idea of doing, of his or any other man's ever doing, or ever having done in any circum- stances. Sad enough. Alas, it is our saddest woe of all ; — too sad for being spoken of at present, while all or nearly all men consider it an imaginary sorrow on my part ! Let the young English soul, in whatever logic-shop and nonsense-verse establishment of an Eton, Oxford, Edinburgh, Halle, Salamanca, or other High Finish- ing School, he may be getting his young idea taught how to speak and spout, and print sermons and re- view-articles, and thereby show himself and fond patrons that it is an idea, — lay this solemnly to heart ; 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, so much hie and virtue is gone, and the vital circulations of yourself and your destiny and activity are henceforth deprived of it. If you could not get it spoken, if you could still constrain it into silence, so mu.ch the richer are 270 STUMP-OUATOR. you. Better keep your idea while yon can : let it still circulate in your blood, and there fructify ; inar- ticulately inciting you to good activities ; giving to your whole spiritual life a mddier heaiih. When the time does come for speaking it, you will speak it all the more concisely, the more expressively, appropri- ately : and if such a time should never come, have you not already acted it, and uttered it as no words can ? Think of this, my young friend ; for there is nothing truer, nothing more forgotten in these shabby gold-laced days. Incontinence is half of all the sins of man. And among the many kinds of that base vice, I knoAV none baser, or at present half so fell and fatal, as that same Incontinence of Tongue. ' Public speaking,' 'parliamentary eloquence : ' it is a Moloch, before whom young souls are made to pass through the fire. They enter, weeping or rejoicing, fond parents consecrating them to the rediiot Idol, as to the Highest God : and they come out spiritually dead. Dead enough ; to live thenceforth a galvanic lite of mere Stnmp-Oratory ; screeching and gibber- ing, words without wisdom, without veracity, with- out conviction more than skin-deep. A divine gift, that ? It is a thing admired by the vulgar, and re- warded with seats in the Cabinet and other precioci- ties; but to the wise, it is a thing not admirable, not adorable ; unmelodious rather, and ghastly and bode- ful, as the speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight ! Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British man, thou that art now growing to be something : not STUMP-ORATOR. 2/1 a StuQip-Orator, if thou canst help it. Appeal not to the vulgar, with its long ears and its seats in the Cab- inet ; not by spoken words to the vulgar ; Jicitc the profane vulgar, and bid it begone. Appeal by silent work, by silent suffering if there be no work, to the gods, who have nobler than seats in the Cabinet for thee ! Talent for Literature, thou hast such a talent ? Believe it not, be slow to believe it ! To speak, or to write. Nature did not peremptorily order thee ; but to work she did. And know this : there never was a talent even for real Literature, not to speak of tal- ents lost and damned in doing sham Literature, but was primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind. Of Literature, in all ways, be shy rather tlian otlierwise, at present ! There where thou art, work, work ; whatsoever thy hand fnideth to do, do it, — with the hand of a man, not of a phantasm ; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and exceeding great reward. Thy words, let them be few, and well or- dered. Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days, when, for very speaking, the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man ; and hearts, in this loud babbling, sit dark and dumb towards one another. Witty, — above all, O, be not witty : none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties: to be vv^ise and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties ! Brave young friend, dear to me, and known too in a sense, though never seen, nor to be seen by me, — you are, what I am not, in the happy case to learn to be some- thing and to do something, instead of eloquently talk- ing about what has been and was done and may be ! The old are what they are, and will not alter ; our 272 STUMr-ORATOR. hope is ill you. England's hope, and the world's, is that there may once more he millions such, instead of units as now. Made ; i fans to pede. And may fu- ture generations, acquainted again with the silences, and once more cognizant of what is nohle and faithful and divine, look back on us with pity and incredulous astonishment ! PARLIAMENTS. By this time it is sufficiently apparent the present Editor is not one of those who expect to see) the Country saved by farther ' reforming ' the reformed Parliament we have got. On the contrary, he has the sad conviction that from such Parliament never so in- geniously reformed, there can no salvation come, but only a speedy finale far different from salvation. It is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man that said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued, and waxing daily, has got to such a height; and that the one method of staving off that fatal consumma- tion, and steering towards the Continents of the Fu- ture, lies not in the direction of reforming Parliament, but of wh^t he calls reforming Downing Street ; a thing infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be stren- uously carried on. To find a Parliament more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the People chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not this at all ; but to find some sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the People, if not their 274 PARLIAMENTS. spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they would at last find to have been their instinctive loill, — which is a far different matter usually, in this bab- bling world of ours. Qualification movement, universal-suffrage move- ment. Reform Association, and suchlike, this f^ditor does not enjoin upon his readers ; — his readers whom (as every crow is known to think her own eggs whitest) he considers to be a select class, the true Aristocracy of England, capable of far better things than these. Which better things, and not the worse, it is his heart's wish to urge them upon doing. And yet, alas, how can he forbid any reader of his, or of other people's, to join such suffrage movement, or still more distract- ed Chartism of Six Points, if it seem hopeful ? Where we are, is no continuing. Men say : " The finale must come, ought to come ; perhaps the sooner it conies, it will be the lighter to bear. If the foul universal boil is to go on ripening, under mere Leave-alone and Premiers of the Phantasm order, perhaps the sooner it bursts, and declares itself as universal gangrene and social death the better ! " Good Heavens, have men computed what the bursting out of virtual disguised Anarchy into open undeniable Anarchy, such as they have in the Continental countries just now, amounts to in human affairs ; what a game that of trying for cure in the Medea's-cauldron of Revolution is! Must we also front the Apotheosis of Attorneyism ; and know what the blackest of terrestrial curses means? But if the captains of the ship are of that scan- dalous class who refuse to be warned except by iceberg counsellors nudging them, what are the miserable crew to do ! Yes, the crew had better consider of that ] they PARLIAMENTS. 275 have greatly too little considered it of late. They will find that in Nature there is no such alarming creature as a Chief Governor of that humor, in getting round a Cape Horn like tiiis of ours ; that, if pity did not check our rage, there is no such traitor in the ship as this unconscious one ! Who, placidly assured, nothing doubting but he is the friend of gods and men, can stand with imperturbable attitude, quietly steering, by his old Whig and other charts of the British Channel (as if we were still there or there- abouts), into the yawning mouth of Chaos, on the other side of the world ; and call it passing the Fore- lands in rough weather, or getting into Cowes, by constitutional methods, and 'remedial measures suited to the occasion.' Our heart's prayer in those circum- stances is: From such Chief Governors, good Lord deliver us ! And if masses of the desperate common men before the mast do invoke Chartism rather, and invite the iceberg counsellors to nudge him, — can- not we too well understand it? I hope, in other quarters of the ship there are men who know wiser courses, and instead of inviting the iceberg counsel- lors and Six Points, will direct all their strength to fling the Phantasm Captain under hatches. It is with the view of aiding and encouraging these latter that we now institute a few considerations upon Parlia- ments generally. Dryasdust in his lumber-masses, which he calls treatises and histories, has not been explicit about Parliaments : bnt we need not doubt, the English Par- liameiit, as windy a palavering and imaginary entity as it has now grown to be, was at one time a quite 276 PARLIAMENTS. solid serious actuality, met for earnest despatch of work Avhich, on the King's part and the Common- wealth's, needed absolutely to be done. Reading m Eadmerus and the dim old Books, one finds gradual- ly that the Parliament was at first a most simple As- semblage, quite cognate to the situation ; that Red William, or whoever had taken on him the terrible task of being King in England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate King- lets, Barons as he called them, to give him the pleas- ure of their company for a week or two : there, in earnest conference all morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might b6, with log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking malmsey and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduons matters of the kingdom. '' You Taillebois, Avhat have you to pro- pose in this arduous matter ? — Frontdeboeuf has another view ; thinks, in his soutliern counties, they will go with the Protectionist movement, and repeal the malt-tax, the African Squadron, and the window- duty itself. — Potdevin, what is your opinion of the measure ; will it hold in your parts ? So, Fitzurse disagrees, then! — Tete-d"etoupes, speak out. And first, the pleasure of a glass of wine, my infant ? " — — Thus, for a fortnight's space, they carried on, after a human manner, their grand National Consult or Parliamentum ; intermingling Dinner with it (as is still the modern method); debating everything, as Tacitus describes the Ancient Germans to have done, two times : once sober, and once what he calls 'drunk,' — not dead-drunk, but jolly round their big PARLIAMENTS. 277 table; — that so both sides of the matter might be seen ; and, midway between rash hope and unreason- able apprehension, the true decision of it might be hit. To this hour no public matter, with whatever serious argument, can be settled in England till it have been dined upon, perhaps repeatedly dined upon. To King Rufus there could no more natural method present itself, of getting his affairs of sovereignty trans- acted, than this same. To assemble all his working Sub-kings about him ; and gather in a human man- ner, by the aid of sad speech and of cheerful, what their real notions, opinions and determinations were. No way of making a law, or of getting one executed when made, except by even such a General Consult in one form or another. — Naturally too, as'in all places where men meet, there established themselves modes of proceeding in this Christmas Parliamentum : secretaries from the first were needed there, strict rec- ord of the results arrived at being indispensable ; and the methods of arriving, marginally noted or other- wise, would not be forgotten : such methods, with trials of ever new methods, accumulating, and in the course of continual practice getting sifted, rejected, adopted, and committed to record, — the vast elabo- ration, now called Law of Parliament, Privilege, Practice of Parliament, and that huge sheepskin quarry, in which Dryasdi^st bores and grovels as if the world's or England's secret lay there, grew to be what we see. So likewise in the time of the Edwards, when Par- liament gradually split itself into Two Houses; and 24 278 PARLIAMENTS. Borough Members and Knights of the Shire were summoned up to answer, Whether they could stand such and such an impost? and took upon them to answer, "Yes, your Majesty; but we have such and such grievances greatly in need of redress first," — nothing could be more natural and human than such a Parliament still was. And so, granting subsidies, stating grievances, and notably widening its field in that latter direction, accumulating new modes, and Practices of Parliament greatly important in world- history, the old Parliament continued an eminently human, veracious and indispensable entity, achieving real work in the Centuries. Down, we may say, to the Century of Charles First, when being constrained by unforeseen necessity to do so, it took suddenly, like water at the boiling point, a quite immense de- velopment of function ; and performed that new func- tion too, to the world's and its own amazement, in an eminently human, authentic and effectual manner, — the ' supply ' it granted his Majesty, this time (in front of Whitehall, as it ultimately proved), being of a very unexpected yet by no means unessential nature ; and the ' grievance ' it now stated for redress being the transcendent one of Compulsion towards Spiritual Nightmare, towards Cantir.g Idolatry, and Death Eter- nal,- — which I do not wonder that they couldn't en- dure, and wouldn't ! Which transcendent grievance, it is well known, they diS get redressed, in a most conspicuous manner, they, for the time being; — and so have since set all the world upon similar but far less hopeful attempts, by methods which appear the same, and are not the same but different. This Long Parliament which conquered its King, PARLIAMENTS. 279 and even extinguished him, since he would in no way be quiet when conquered ; and which thus, the first of such Assemblages, declared that it was Sovereign in the Nation, and more royal than any King who could be there, — has set a flaming pattern to all the world, Avhich now after centuries all the world is fruitlesdy bent to emulate. This ever-memorable Long Parlia- ment is definable, both in regard to its destinies in His- tory, and to its intrinsic collective and individual worth among Deliberative Assemblies, as the Acme of Parlia- ments ; the highest that it lay in them, to be, or to do, in human afl'airs. The consummation, this, and slow eactus-flowerage of the parliamentary tree among man- kind, which blossoms only in thousands of years, and is seen only once by men : the Father, this, of all Con- gresses, National Conventions and sublunary Parlia- ments that have since been. But what I had to remark of this Long Parlia- ment, and of its English predecessors generally from the times of Rufus downwards, is their perfect ve- racity of purpose, their exact adaptation to getting the business done that was in hand. Supplies did, in some way, need to be granted ; grievances, such as never fail, did, in some way need to be stated and redressed. The silent Peoples had their Paidiamen- tiun ; mid spake by it to their Kings who governed them. In all human Government, wherever a man will attempt to govern men, this is a function neces- sary as the breath of life : and it must be said the old European Populations, and the fortunate English best of all, did this function well. The old Parliaments were authentic entities ; came upon indispensable work ; and were in earnest to their very finger-ends 280 PARLIAMENTS. about getting it done. No conclave of railway direc- tors, met with closed doors upon the sacred cause of script and dividends, could be more intent upon the business necessary, or be more appropriate for it, than those old Parliaments were. In modern Parliaments, again, indeed ever down from the Long Parliament, I note a sad gradual fall- ing off in this matter of 'veracity,' — which, alas, means a falling off in all real use, or possible advan- tage, there can be to mankind in such Institutions. The Parliament, if we examine well, has irrevocably lost certain of its old functions, which it still pretends to do; and has got certain new functions, which it never can do, and yet pretends to be doing : a doubly fatal predicament for the Parliament. Its functions growing ever more confused in this twofold way, the position of the Parliament has become a false, and has gradually been becoming an impossible one, in modern affairs. While on the other hand, the poor Parliament, little conscious of all that, and long dim- ly struggling to remedy all that, and exist amidst it ; or in latter years, still more fatally admitting all that, and quietly consenting to exist beside it ivithoiit remedy, — has had to distort and pervert its poor ac- tivity in all manner of ways ; and at length has dif- fused itself into oceans of windy talk reported in Hansard; has grown, in short, a National Palaver; and is, as I said lately, one of the strangest entities this sun ever looked down upon. For, I think, a National Palaver recognized as Sovereign, a solemn Convocation of all the Stump-Orators in the Nation to come and govern us, was not seen in the earth till PARLIAMENTS. 281 recently. I consider it has been reserved for these our Latter Generations ; a product long ripening for us from afar ; — and would fain hope that, like the Long Parliament, or acme and consummate flower in any kind, it can only be a transient phenomenon ! Some functions that are and continue real the Par- liament still has; — and these it becomes infinitely necessary to dissever, and extricate alive, from the ocean of unreality in which they swim. Unreality is death, to Parliaments and all things. The real functions whatsoever they are, these, most certainly, are all the good we shall ever get of Parliament ; and the question now is, Shall said good be drowned, or not be drowned, in the immeasurable accompaniment of imaginary functions, which are evil and falsity and that only ? In the way of changed times I note two grand modern facts, omitting many minor, which have, one of them irrevocably, and the other hopelessly for the present, altered from top to bottom the function and position of all Parliaments ; and which do now fatally vitiate their procedure everywhere, rendering much of what they do a, superfluity, a mere hypocrisy, or nox- ious grimace ; and thus infecting even what is real in their function with a windy falsity, lamentable to be- hold and greatly requiring to be altered : Fact first^ the existence of an Unfettered Press, with its perennial ever-increasing torrent of morning newspapers, pam- phlets, books : fact seco?id, that there is now no King present in Parliament ; no King now there, the Kiiig 24* 282 PARLIAMENTS. having vanished, — in front of Whitehall, long since f Fact first I take to be unalterable. Complete alteration of fact second I discern to be distant, but likewise to be indispensable and inevitable ; and to require ur- gently here and now (by New Downing Streets or otherwise) a strenuous beginning, from all good citi- zens who would do any reform in their generation. Both facts together have dislocated every joint of the old arrangement, and made the modern Parliament a new creature ; and whosoever means to work reform there, will either open his eyes, and keep them open, to both these facts, or work only mischief and ruin. In countries that can stand a Free Press, — which many cannot, but which England, thanks to her long good training, still can, — it is evident the National Consult or real Parliamentary Debate goes on of itself, everywhere, continually. Is not the Times Newspaper an open Forum, open as never Forum was before, where all mortals vent their opinion, state their grievance, — all manner of grievances, from loss of your umbrella in a railway, to loss of your honor and fortune by unjust sovereign persons ? One grand branch of the Parliament's trade is evidently dead , forever ! Nor is the other grand branch very living. If we will consider it, the essential truth of the matter is, every British man can now elect himself to Parliament without consulting the hustings at all. If there be any vote, idea or notion in him, or any earthly or heavenly thing, cannot he take a pen, and therewith autocratically pour forth the same into the ears and hearts of all people, so far as it will go ? Precisely so far ; and, what is a great advantage too, no farther. The discussion of questions goes on, not PARLIAMENTS. 283 in St. Stephen's now, but from Dan to Beersheba by able-editors and articulate-speaking creatures that can get others to listen to them. This is the fact ; and it demands to be attended to as such, — and will pro- duce changes, I think, by and by. What is the good of men collected, with effort, to debate on the benches of St. Stephen's, now when there is a Times Newspaper? Not the discussion of questions; only the ultimate voting of them (a very brief process, I should think !) requires to go on, or can veritably go on, in St. Stephen's now. The honorable gentleman is oftenest very wearisome in St. Stephen's now : his and his Constituency's Aye or No, is all we want of the honorable gentleman there ; all we are ever like to get of him there, — could it but be had without admixtures ! If your Lordship will reflect on it, you will find it an obsolete function, this debating one of his ; useless in these new times, as a set of riding postboys would be, along the line of the Great Western Railway. Loving my life, and time which is the stuff of life, I read no Parliamentary Debates, rarely any Parliamentary Speech ; but I am told there is not, once in the seven years, the smallest gleam of new intelligence thrown oh any matter, earthly or divine, by an honorable gentleman on his legs in Parliament. Nothing offered you but weari- some, dreary, thrice-boiled colewort ; — a bad article at first, and served and again served in Newspapers and Periodical and other Literatures, till even the in- ferior animals would recoil from it. Honorable gen- tlemen have complained to myself that under the sky there was not such a bore. What is or can be the use of this, your Lordship ? 284 PARLIAMENTS. Let an honorable gentleman who has cole wort, or stump-oratory of that kind, send it direct to the Times ; perhaps they will print it for him, and then all persons can read it there who hope instruction from it. If the Times refuse to print it, let the hon- orable gentleman, if still so minded, print it at his own expense ; let him advertise it at a penny the gross, distribute it gratis as handbill, or even offer a small reward per head to any citizen that will read it : but if after all, no body of citizens will read it even for a reward, then let the honorable gentleman retire into himself, and consider what such omens mean ! So much I take to be fair, or at least un- avoidable in a free country : Let every creature try to get his opinion listened to ; and let honorable gen- tlemen who can print their own stump-oratory, and offer the public a reward for using it, by all means do so. But that, when no human being will incline or even consent to have their said oratory, they can get upon their legs in Parliament and pour it out still, to the burdening of many Newspapers, to the boring of their fellow-creatures, and generally to the despair of all thinking citizens in the community : this is and remains, I mitst crave to say, an infatuation, and, whatever respectable old coat you put upon it, is fast growing a nuisance which must be abated. Still more important for a Parliament is the ques- tion : King present there, or no King ? Certain it always is, and if forgotten, it much requires to be brought to mind, that a Parliament acting in the character of a body to be consulted by the sovereign ruler, or executive King of a Nation, diff'ers ini- PARLIAMENTS. ^35 mensely from a Parliament which is itself to enact the sovereign rnler, and to be supreme over all things; not merely giving its advice, its remonstrance, dissent or assent, and leaving the ruler still to decide with that new illumination ; but deciding of itself, and by its Yes or its No peremptorily ordering all things to be or not to be. These, I say, are two extremely different characters for a Parliament to enact ; and they necessitate all manner of distinctions, of the most vital nature, in our idea of a Parliament ; so that what applies with full force to a Parliament act- ing the former character, will not apply at all to one enacting the latter ; nay what is of the highest ben- efit in the former kind of Parliament, may not only in the latter kind be of no benefit, but be even of the fatallest detriment, and bring destruction to the poor Parliament itself and to all that depends thereon. It is first of all, therefore, to be inquired, Whether your Parliament is actually in practice the Adviser of the Sovereign; oris the Sovereign itself? For the distinction is profound ; goes down to the very roots of Parliament and of the Body Politic ; and if you confound the two kinds of Parliaments, and apply to the one the psalmodyings and celebratings of consti- tutional doctors (very rife through the eighteenth century), which were meant for the other, and were partly true of the other, but are altogether false of this, — you will set forth in a radically wrong course, and will advance incessantly, with whatever psalm- odyings of your own or of the world's, to a goal you are like to be much surprised at ! — Under which of these two descriptions the British Parliament of our 286 PARLIAMENTS. time falls, no one can need to be informed. Apart from certain thin fictions, and constitutional cobwebs which it is not expected any one should not see through, our Parliament is the sovereign ruler and real executive King of this Empire ; and constitu- tional men. who for a century past have been singing praises to that sublime Institution in its old character, are requested to look at it in this new one, and see what praises it has earned for itself there. Hitherto, in these last fifteen years since it has worked without shackle in that new character, one does not find its praises mount very high ! The exercise of English Sovereignty, if that mean governance of the Twenty- seven million British souls and guidance of their tem- poral and eternal interests towards a good issue, does not seem to stand on the very best footing just at pres- ent ' Not as a Sovereign Ruler of the Twenty-seven million British men, or heroic guide of their temporal or their eternal interests, has the reformed Parliament distinguished itself as yet, but otherwise only if at all. In fact, there rises universally the complaint, and expression of surprise, That our reformed Parliament cannot get on with any kind of work, except that of talking, which does not serve much; and the Chief Minister has been heard lamenting, in a pathetic manner, that the Business of the Nation (meaning thereby the voting of the supplies) was dreadfully obstructed ; and that it would be difficult for him to accomplish the business of the Nation, meaning there- by the voting of the supplies, if honorable gentlemen would not please to hold their tongues a little. It is really pathetic, after a sort ; and unless parliamentary eloquence will suffice the British Nation, and its busi- PARLIAMENTS. 287 nesses and wants^ orje sees not what is to become of us in that direction. For. in fine, the tragic expe- rience is dimly but irrepressibly forcing itself on all the world, that our British Parliament does not shine a3 Sovereign Ruler of the British Nation ; that it wa& excellent only as Adviser of the Sovereign Ruler ; and has not, somehow or other, the art of getting work done ; but produces talk merely, not of the most in- structive sort for most part, and in vortexes of talk is not unlike to submerge itself and the whole of us, if help come not ! My own private notion, which I invite all reformed British citizens to reflect on, is and has for a long time been. That this dim universal experience, which points towards very tragic facts, will more and more rapidly become a clear universal experience, and disclose a tragic law of Nature little dreamt of by constitutional men of these times. That a Parliament, especially a Parliament Avith Newspaper Reporters firmly estab- lished in it, is an entity which by its very nature can- not do work, but can do talk only, — which at times may be needed, and at other times again may be very needless. Consider, in fact, a body of Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to consult about 'business,' with Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criti- cizing them : — was there ever since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any * business ' accomplished in these circumstances ? The begin- - ning of all business everywhere, as all practical per- sons testify, is decidedly this, That every man shut his mouth, and do not open it again till his thinking and contriving faculty have elaborated something 288 PARLIAMENTS. worth articulating. Which rule will much abridge the flow of speech iu such assemblies ! This, how- ever, is the preliminary fundamental rule for business; and this, alas, is precisely the rule which cannot be attended to in constitutional Parliaments. Add now another most unfortunate condition. That your Parliamentary Assembly is not very much in earnest, not at all '■ dreadfully in earnest,' to do even the best it can ; that in general the Nation it represents is no longer an earnest Nation, but a light, sceptical epicurean one, which for a century has gone along smirking, grimacing, cutting jokes about all things, and has not been bent with dreadful earnestness on any thin?; at all, except on making money each mem- ber of it for himself: here, certainly enough, is a Par- liament that will do no business except such as can be done in sport; and unfortunately, it is well known, almost none can be done in that way. To which Parliament, in the centre of such a Nation, introduce now assiduous Newspaper Reporters, and six yards of small type laid on all breakAist-tables every morning : alas, are not the Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscel- laneous gentlemen who sit to do sovereign business in such circumstances, verily a self-contradiction, a sole- cism in Nature, — Nature having appointed that busi- ness shall not be done in that way ? Incapable they of doing business ; capable of speech only, and this none of the best. Speech which, as we can too well see, whether it be speech to the question and to the wise men near, or ' speech to Bunkum ' (as the Americans call it), to the distant constituencies and the twenty- seven millions mostly fools, will yearly grow more PARLIAMENTS. 289 worthless as speech, and threaten to finish by becom- ing burdensome to gods and men ! So that the sad conclusion, which all experience, Avherever it has been tried, is fatally making good, appears to be, That Parliaments, admirable as Ad- vising Bodies, and likely to be in future universally useful in that capacity, are, as Ruling and Sovereign Bodies, not useful, but useless or worse. That a Sovereign with nine-hundred or with six-hundred and fifty-eight heads, all set to talk against each other in the presence of tliirty-four or twenty-seven or eighteen millions, cannot do the work of sovereignty at all ; but is smitten with eternal incompetence for that function by the law of Nature itself. Such, alas, is the sad conclusion ; and in England, and wherever else it is tried, a sad experience will rapidly make it good. Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do tcithoiit governing, — every man being at least able to live, and move off" into the wil- derness, let Congress jargon as it will, — can such a form of so called ' Government ' continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there. For America, as the citizens well know, is an "unparal- leled country," — with mud soil enough and fierce sun enough in the Mississippi Valley alone to grow Indian corn for the extant Posterity of Adam at this time; — what other country ever stood in such a case ? ' Speeches to Bunkum,' and a constitutional battle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other countries are becoming tragical and unendurable, may there still ^5 290 PARLIAMENTS. fall under the comical category. If indeed America should ever experience a higher call, as is likely, and begin to feel diviner wants than that of Indian corn wkh abundant bacon and molasses, and unlimited scope for all citizens to hunt dollars, — America too will find that caucuses, division-lists, stnmp-oratory and speeches to Bunkum will not carry men to the immortal gods ; that the Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is, there as here, naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such ; and in fine that said sublime constitutional arrange- ment will require to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as iew expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed ; torn asunder, put together again; — not without heroic labor, and effort quite other than that of the Stump-Orator and the Revival Preacher, one day ! Thus if the first grand branch of parliamentary business, that of stating grievances, has fallen to the Unfettered Presses, and become quite dead for Parlia- ments, infecting them with mere hypocrisy when they now try it, — the second or new grand branch of business intrusted to them, and passionately expected and demanded of them, is one which they cannot do ; the attempt and pretence to do which can only still farther involve them in hypocrisy, in fatal cecity, stump-oratory, futility, and the faster accelerate their doom, and ours if we depend on them. We may take it as a fact, and should lay it to heart everywhere, That no Sovereign Ruler with six-hun- dred and fifty-eight heads, set to rule twenty-seven millions, by continually talking in the hearing of ♦^»p.m all. can for the life of it make a good figure iq PARLIAMENTS. 291 that vocation ; but must by nature make a bad figure, and ever a worse and worse, till, some good day, by soft recession, or by rude propulsion, as the Omnipo- tent Beneficence may direct, it — get relieved from said vocation. In the whole course of History I have heard of only two Parliaments of the Sovereign sort, that did the v/ork of sovereignty with some effect : the Na- tional Convention, in Paris, during the P'rench Revo- lution ; and the Long Parliament, here at London, during our own. Not that the work, in either case, was perfect ; far enough from that ; but with all im- perfections it was got done ; and neither of these two workers proved to be quite futile, or a solecism in its place in the world. These two Parliaments succeed- ed, and did not fail. The conditions, however, were peculiar ; not likely to be soon seen again. In the first place, of both these Parliaments it can be said that they were 'dreadfully in earnest ; ' in ear- nest as no Parliaments before or since ever were. Nay indeed, in the end, it had become a matter of life or death with them. But apart from that latter consid- eration, in the Long Parliament especially, nothing so astonishes a modern man as the serious, solemn, nay devout, religiously earnest spirit in which almost every member had come up to his task. For the English was yet a serious, devout Nation, — as in fact it intrin- sically still is, and ever tends and strives to be ; this its poor modern levity, sceptical knowingness, and sniffing, grinning humor, being forced on it, and sit- ting it very ill : — ever a devout Nation, I say; and the Divine Presence yet irradiated this poor Earth i292 PARLIAMENTS. and its business to most men ; and to all Englishmen the Parliament, we can observe, was still what their Temple was to the ancient Hebrews ; the most august of terrestrial objects, into Avhich when a man entered, he felt that he was standing on holy ground. Liter- ally so ; and much is the modern man surprised at it ; and only after much reluctance can he admit it to be credible, to be certain and visible among our old fa- thers there. — In which temper alone, is there not sure promise of work being done, under any circumstances whatsoever? Given any lamest Talking Parliament, Avith its Chartisms or its starving Irish, and a starving w^orld getting all into pike-points round it ; given the saddest natural solecism discoverable in the Earth or under the Earth ; — inform it with this noble spirit, it will from the first hour become a less sad solecism ; it will, if such divine spirit hold in it, and nerve its con- tinual efforts, cease at last to be a solecism, and by self-sacrifice or otherwise become a veracity, and get itself adopted by Nature. But secondly, what likewise is of immense signifi- cance, the Long Parliament had no Reporters. Very far from that ; no Member himself durst so much as whisper to any extraneous mortal, without leave given, what went on within those sacred walls. Solemn reprimand from the Speaker, austere lodgment in the Tower, if he did. If a patriot stranger, coming up on express pilgrimage from the country, chance to gaze in from the Lobby too curiously on the august Assem- blage (as once or twice happens), he is instantly seized by the fit usher; led, pale as his shirt, into the floor of the honorable House. Speaker LenthalTs and four- hundred other pairs of Olympian eyes transfixing him, PARLIAMENTS. 293 that it "be there ascertained, Whether the Tower, the Tarpeiaii rock, or what in Natnre or out of it, shall be the doom of such a man ! A silent place withal, though a talking one ; hermetically sealed ; no whisi-er to be published of it, except what the honorable House it- self directs. Let a modern honorable member, with his reporters' gallery, his strangers' gallery, his temale ventilator, and twenty-seven millions mostly fools listening to him at Bunkum, wliile all at hand are asleep, consider what a fact is that old one ! But thirdly, what also is a most important fact in this question, the Long Parliament, after not many months of private debating, split itself fairly into two parties; and the Opposition party fairly rode away, designing to debate in another manner thenceforth. What an abatement of parliamentary eloquence in that one fact by itself, is evident enough ! The Long Parliament, for all manner of reasons, for these three and for others that could be given, was an nnexam- pled Parliament, — properly indeed, as I sometimes define it, the Father of all Parliaments which have sat since in this world ! ^ The French Convention did its work, too ; and this under circumstances intrinsically similar, much as they differed outwardly. No Parliatiient more ' in earnest ' ever sat in any country or time ; and indeed it was the Parliament of a Nation all in deadly ear- nest ; gambling against the world for life or for death. The Convention had indeed Reporters ; and encoun- tered much parliamentary eloquence at its starting, and underwent strange handlings and destinies in consequence : but we know how it managed with its 25* 294 PARLIAMENTS. parliamentary eloquence, and got that reduced tc limits, when once business did behove to be done ! The Convention, its Girondins and opposition par- ties once thrown out, had its Committee of Salut Piihlique, consisting of Twelve, of Nine, or even properly of Three.; in whose hands lay all sovereign business, and the whole terrible task of ascertaining what was to be done. Of which latter, the latter be- ing itself so immense, so swift and imperatively need- ful, all parliamentary eloquence was to be the enforce- ment and publisher and recorder merely. And what- ever eloquent heads chose to obstruct this sovereign Committe, the Convention had its guillotine, and swiftly rid itself of these and of their eloquence. Whereby business went on, without let on that side ; and actually got itself done ! These are the only instances I know, of Parlia- ments that succeeded in the business of Government ; and these I think are 7tot inviting instances to the British reformer of this day. Rather what we may call paroxysms of parliamentary life, than instances of what could be continuously expected of any Par- liament, — or perhaps even transiently wished of any. They were the appropriate, and as it proved, the effectual organism for Periods of a quite transcendent character in National Life ; such as it is not either likely or desirable that we should see, except at very long intervals, in human affairs. The fact is, Parliaments have had two great blows, in modern times ; and are now in a manner quite shorn of their real strength, and what is still worse, invested with an imaginary. Faust of Mentz, when PARLIAMENTS. 295 he invented ^ moveable types ' inflicted a terrible blow on Parliaments ; suddenly, though yet afar off, redu- cing them to a mere scantling of their former self, and taking all the best business out of their hands. Then again John Bradshaw, when he ordered the hereditary King to vanish, in front of Whitehall, ^and proclaimed that Parliament itself was King, — John, little con- scious of it, inflicted a still more terrible blow on Parliaments ; appointing them to do (especially with Faust, too, or the Morning Newspaper, gradually get- ting in) what Nature and Fact had decided they could never do. In which doubly fatal state, with Faust busier than ever among them, they continue at this moment, — working towards strange issues, 1 do believe ! Or, speaking in less figurative language, our con- clusion is, first, That Parliaments, while they con- tinued, as our English ones long did, mere advisers of the Sovereign Ruler, were invaluable institutions ; and did, especially in periods when there was no Times Newspaper, or other general Forum free to every citizen who had three fingers and a smattering of grammar, — deserve well of mankind, and achieve services for which we should be always grateful. This is conclusion first. But then, alas, equally irref- ragable comes conclusion second, That Parliaments when they get to try, as our poor British one now does, the art of governing by themselves as the Su- preme Body in the Nation, make no figure in that capacity, and can make none, but by the very nature of the case are unable to do it. Only two instances are on record of Parliaments having, in any circum- stances, succeeded as Governing Bodies ; and it is even 296 PAIlLIAI\IE?s'T». hoped., or ought to be, by men generally, that there may not for another thousand years be a tliird ! As not only our poor British Parliament of those years and decades, but all the sudden European Par- liaments, at Paris, Frankfort, Erfurt and elsewhere, are Parliaments which undertake that second or im- possible function of governing as Parliaments, and must either do it, or sink in black anarchy one knows not whitherward, — the horoscope of Parliaments is by no means cheering at present ; and good citizens may justly shudder, if their anticipations point that way, at the prospect of a Chartist Parliament here. For your Chartist Parliament is properly the consum- mation of that fatal tendency, towards the above- mentioned impossible function, on the part of Parlia- ments. A tendency not yet consummated with us ; for we still have other fragments of old Authority lodged elsewhere than in the Parliament, which stiii struggle here and there to accomplish a little govern- ing, though under strange conditions : and to instal a Parliament of the Six Points would be precisely to extinguish with the utmost rapidity all such frag- ments, and solemnly by National Charter and Six Pdints-to bid the Parliament, '' Be supreme King over us, thou, in all respects; and rule us, thou, — since it is impossible for thee ! " These are serious considerations, sufficient to create alarm and astonishment in any constitutional man. But really it grows late in the day with constitutional men ; and it is time for them to look up from their Delolme. If the constitutional man will take the old PARLIAMENTS. 297 Delolme-Bentham spectacles off his nose, and look abroad into the Fact itself with such eyes as he may have, I consider he will find that reform in matters social does not now mean, as he has long sleepily fan- cied, reform in Parliament alone or chiefly or perhaps at all. My alarming message to him is, that the thing we vitally need is not a more and more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a Ruling Sovereign to preside over Parliament ; that we have already got the former entity in some measure, but that we are farther than ever from the road towards the latter ; and that if the latter be missed and not got, there is no life possible for us. A New Downing Street, an infinitely reformed Governing Apparatus ; there some hope might lie. A Parliament, any conceivable Par- liament, continuing to attempt the function of Gov- ernor, can lead us only into No-Government which is called Anarchy ; and the more ' reformed ' or Demo- cratic you make it, the swifter will such consumma- tion be. Men's hopes from a Democratic or otherwise re- ^ formed Parliament are various, and rather vague at present ; but surely this, as the ultimate essence, lies and has always lain in the heart of them all : That hereby we shall succeed better in domg the com- mandment of Heaven, instead of everywhere violat- ing or ignoring Heaven's commandment, and incur- ring Heaven's curse, as now. To ascertain better and better what the will of the Eternal was and is with us, what the Laws of the Eternal are, all Par- 298 PARLIAMENTS. liameiits, Ecnmenic Councils, Congresses, and other Collective AViscloms, have had this for their object. This or else nothing easily conceivable, — except to merit damnation for themselves, and to get it too ! Nevertheless, in the exp.licable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presunnption to the contrary has gone idly abroad ; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we -vote' this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. "Who's to decide it?'' they all ask, as if the whole or chief question lay there. " Who's to decide it ? " asks the irritated British citizen, with a sneer in his tone. '• Who's to de'*ide it ? " asks he, oftener than any other question of me. Decide it, O irritated British citizen ? Why, thou, and I, and each man into whose living soul the Almighty has breathed a gleam of understanding ; we are all, and each of us for his own self, to decide it : and wo will befall us, each and all, if we don't decide it aright ; according as the Almighty has already '■ decided ' it, as it has been appointed to be and to continue, before all human decidings and after them all ! — Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting ; that it is all a study of division lists, and for the Universe too, depends a little on the activity of the whipper-in. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not PARLIAMENTS. 293 fixable or changeable by voting ! Neither properly, we say, are the Laws of England, or those of any other land never so repubh'can or red republican, fix- able or changeable by that poor foulish process ; not at all, O constitutional Peter, much as it may as- tonish you ! Voting is a method we have agreed upon for settling temporary discrepancies of opinion as to what is law or not law in this small section of the Universe called England : a good temporary method, possessing some advantages ; which does set- tle the discrepancy for the moment. Nay, if the votings were sincere and loyal, we might have some chance withal of being right as to the question, and of settling it blessedly forever; — though again, if the votings are insiuv^^re, selfish, almost professedly ^'S STATUE. 333 ever from all men. As warming-pans, as cheap brass candlesticks, men will get good of this metal ; as de- votionary Images in such form, evil only. These are not heroes, gods, or demigods ; and it is a horrible idolatry, if you knew it, to set them up as such ! Are these your Pattern Men ? Great Men ? They are your lucky (or unlucky) Gamblers swollen big. Paltry Adventurers for most part ; worthy of no wor- ship ; and incapable forever of getting any, except from the soul consecrated to flunkeyism. Will a man's soul worship that, think you? Never; if you fashioned him of solid gold, big as Benlomond, no heart of a man would ever look upon him except with sorrow and despair. To the flunkey-heart alone is he, was he or can he at any time be, a thing to look upon with upturned eyes of ' transcendent admiration,' worship or worth-ship so-called. He, you unfortunate fools, he is not the one we want to be kept in mind of; not he. at all by any means ! To him and his memory, — if you had not been unfortunate and blockheads, — you would have sunk acoalshaft rather than raised a column. Deep coalsliaft, there to bury him and his memory, that men might never speak or hear of him more ; not a high column to admonish all men that they should try to resemble him ! Of the sculptural talent manifest in these Brazen Images I say nothing, though much were to be said. For indeed, if there is no talent displayed in them but a perverse one, are we not to consider it a happiness, in that strange case ? This big swollen Gambler, and gluttonous hapless 'spiritual Daniel Lambert,' de- served a coalshaft from his brother mortals : let at 331 least his column be ugly! — Nevertheless ngly col- umns and images are, in themselves, a real evil. They too preach ugliness after their sort ; and have a certain elfect, the whole of which is bad. They sanction and consecrate artistic botching, pretensions futility, and the horrible doctrine that this Universe is Cockney Nightmare, — which no creature ought for a moment to believe, or listen to ! In brief, they encourage an already ugly Population to become in a thousand ways uglier. They too, for their ugliness, — did not the infi- nitely deeper ugliness of the thing they commemorate absorb all consideration of that, — would deserve, and do in fact incessantly solicit, abolition from the sight of men. What good in the aesthetic, the moral, social or any human point of view, we are ever to get of these Brazen Images now peopling our chief cities and their market-places, it is impossible to s[)ecify. Evil enough we, consciously or unconsciously, get of them; no soul looks upon them approvingly or even indilferently without damage, all the deadlier the less he knows of it. Simple souls they corrupt in the sources of their spiritual being : wise souls, obliged to look on them, look with some feeling of anger and just abhorrence ; which is itself a mischief to a peaceable man. Good will never be got of these Brazen Images in their present form. Of what use, till once broken up and melted into warming-pans, they can ever be to gods or me:), I own I camiot see. Gods and men demand th.at this, wliich is their sure ultimate destiny, should 60 soon as possible be realized. Hudson's statue. 335 It is tragically evident to me, our first want, which includes all Avants, is that of a new real Aristocracy of fact, instead of the extinct imaginary one of title which the anarchic world is everywhere rebelling against : but if it is from Popular Suffrage that we are to look for such a blessing, is not this extraordi- nar}^ populace of British 'Statues, which now domi- nates our market-places, one of the saddest omene that ever was ? Suffrage annoimces to us, nothing doubting : " Here are your real demigods and heroic men, ye famous British People ; here are Brazen and other Images worthy once more of some worship ; this is the Zsew Aristocracy I have chosen, and would choose, for you !" That is Snffi-age's opinion. To me this populace of British Statues rises aloft over the Chaos of our affairs like the living symbol and consummate flower of said Chaos, and silently speaks the mournfnllest prophecy. Perhaps as strange a Pan- theon of brass gods as was ever got together in this world. They stand there, poor wretches, gradually rusting in the sooty rain; black and dismal, — when one thinks of them in some haggard mood of the im- agination, — like a set of grisly undertakers come to bury the dead spiritualisms of mankind. There stand they, in all weathers, indicating to the British Popu- lation such a Heaven and such an Earth as probably no Population ever had before. In the social, politi- cal, religious, artistic, and other provinces of our affairs, they point toward depths of .prostrate abase- ment which no man's thought has yet sounded. . Let us timidly glance thitherward a little ; gaze, for mo- ments, into those abysses of spiritual death, — which if we cannot one day sound them, and subdue them, ^^6 Hudson's statue. will ingulf us all ! — 4iid first as to this recipe of Popular Election. Hudson the railway king, if Popular Election be the rule, seems to be by far the most authentic king extant in. this world. Hudson has been ' elected by the people ' so as almost none other is or was. Hud- son solicited no vote ; his votes were silent voluntary ones, not liable to be false : he did a thing whicb men found, in their inarticulate hearts, to be worthy of pay- ing money for ; and they paid it. What the desire of every heart was, Hudson had or seemed to have produced : Scrip out of which profit could be made. They ' voted ' for him by purchasing his scrip with a profit to him. Every vote was the spontaneous prod- uct of those men's deepest insights and most practi- cal convictions, about Hudson and then)selves and this Universe : I say, it was not a spoken vote, but a silently acted one ; a vote for once incapable of being insincere. What their appetites, intelligences, stupid- ities and pruriences had taught these men, they au- thentically told you there. I beg you to mark that well. Not by all the ballotboxes in Nature could you have hoped to get, with such exactness, from these men, what the deepest inarticulate voice of the gods and of the demons in them was, as by this their spon- taneous purchase of scrip. It is the ultimate rectified quintessence of these men's ' votes ; ' the distillation of their very souls ; the sincerest sincerity that v/as in them. Without gratitude to Hudson, or even with- out thought of him, they raised Hudson to his bad eminence, not by their voice given once at some hus- tings, under the intlnence of balderdash and beer, but HUDSON i. LTATTJfi. 337 by the thought of their heart, by the inarticulate, indisputable dictate of their whole being. Hudson in(|uircd of England : " What precious tiling can I do for you, O enhghtened Countrymen ; what may be the vakie to you, by popular election, of this stroke of work that lies in me ? " Popular election, with universal, with household and other suffrage, free as air, deep as life and death, free and deep as spoken suffrage never was or could be, has answered : "Pounds sterling to such and such amount ; that is tlie apparent value of thy stroke of work to us, — blockheads as we are." Real value differs from appar- ent to a frightful extent in this world, try it by what suffrage you will ! Hudson's value as a demigod being what it was, his value as a maker of railways shall hardly concern us here. What Hudson's real worth to mankind in the matter of railways might be, I cannot pretend to say. Fact knows it to the uttermost fraction, and will pay it him yet ; but men differ widely in opinion, and in general do not in the least know. From my own private observation and conjecture, I should say, Trifling if any worth. Much as we love railways, there is one thing unde- niable: Railways are shifting all Towns of Britain into new places; no Town will stand where it did, and nobody can tell for a long while yet where it will stand. This is an unexpected, and indeed most dis- astrous result. I perceive, railways have set all the Towns of Britain a-dancing. Reading is coming up to London. Basingstoke is going d«wn to Gosport or Southampton, Dumfries to Liverpool and Glasgow; 29 338 Hudson's statue. while at Crewe, and other points. I see new ganglions of human population establishing themselves, and the prophecy of metallnrgic cities which were not heard of before. Reading, Basingstoke and the rest, the inifortunate Towns, subscribed money to get railways ; and it proves to be for cutting their own throats. Their business has gone elsewhither ; and they — can- not stay behind their business ! They are set a-dan- cing, as I said ; confusedly waltzing, in a state of progressive dissolution, towards the four winds ; and knoV not where the end of the death-dance will be for them, in what point of space tliey will be allowed to rebuild them.^elves. That is their sad case. And what an affair it is in each of the shops and houses of those Towns, thus silently bleeding to death, or what we call dancing away to other points of the British territory : how Joplin of Reading, who had anchored himself in that pleasant place, and fondly hoping to live by upholstery and paperhanging, had wedded, and made friends there, — awakens some morning, and finds that his trade has flitted away ! Here it is not any longer ; it is gone to London, to Bristol : whither has it gone ? Joplin knows not whither ; knows and sees only that gone it is ; and that lie by preternatural sagacity must scent it out again, fol- low it over the world, and catch it again, or else die. Sad news for Joplin : — indeed I fear, should his saga- city be too inconsiderable, he is not unlikely to break his heart, or take to drinking, in these inextricable circum- stances ! And it is the history, more or less, in every town, house, shop and industrial dwelling-place of the British Empire at this moment ; — and the cipher of afflicted Joplins ; and the amount of private dis- Hudson's statue. 339 tress, uncertainty, discontent ; and withal of ' revolu- tionary movement ' created hereby, is tragical to think of. This is ' revohitionary movement ' with a witness; revolution brought home to everybody's hearth and moneysafe, and heart and stomach. — Which miserable result, with so many others from the same source, what method was there of avoiding or indefinitely mitigating? This surely, as the begin- ning of all : That you had made your railways not in haste ; that, at least, you had spread the huge pro- cess, sure to alter all men's mutual position and rela- tions, over a reasonable breadth of time ! For all manner of reasons, how much could one have wished that the making of our British railways had gone on with deliberation ; that these great works had made themselves not in five years, but in fifty and five! Hudson's 'worth' to railways, I think, will mainly resolve itself into this, That he carried them to completion within the former short limit of time; that he got them made, — in extremely im- proper directions I am told, and surely with endless confusion to the innumerable passive Joplins, and likewise to the numerous active scrip-holders, a wide- spread class, once rich, now coinless, — hastily in five years, not deliberately in fifty-five. His worth to railways? His worth, I take it, to English railways, much more to English men, will turn out to be ex- tremely inconsiderable ; to be incalculable damage rather ! Foolish railway people gave him two mil- lions, and thought it not enough without a Statue to boot. But Fact thought, and is now audibly saying, far otherwise ! Rhadamanthus, had you been able to consult him, would in nowise have given this man 340 IIUDSOIJ'S STATUE. twenty-five thousand pounds for a Statue. What if Rhadamanthns doomed him rather, let us say, to ride ill Express-trains, novvhither, for twenty-five a3ons, or to hang in Heaven as a Locomotive Constellation, and be a sign forever ! Fact and Suffrage : what a discrepancy ! Fact de- cided for some coalshaft such as we describe. Suf- frage decides for such a column. Suffrage having money in its pocket, carries it hollow, for the moment. And so there is Rayless Majesty exalted far above the cliimney-pots, with a potential Copper Likeness, twenty-five thousand pounds worth of copper over and above ; and a King properly belonging only to tliis epoch. — That there are greedy blockheads in huge majority, in all epochs, is certain ; but that any sane mortal should think of counting their heads to ascertain who or what is to be King, this is a little peculiar. All Democratic men, and members of the Suffrage Movement, it appears to me, are called upon to think seriously, with a seriousness approaching to despair, of these things. Jefferson Brick, the American editor, twitted me Avith the multifarious patented anomalies of overgrown worthless Dukes, Bishops of Durham, &c., which poor English Society at present labors under, and is made a solecism by. To which Avhat answer could I make, except, that surely our patented anomalies were some of them extremely ugly, and yet, alas, that they were not the ugliest! I said: "Have not you also overgrown anomalous Dukes after a sort, ap- pointed not by patent ? Overgrown Monsters of Wealth, namely ; who have made money by dealing in cotton, dealing in bacon, jobbing scrip, digging 3U metal in California; who are become glittering man- mountains filled with gold and preciosities; revered by the surrounding flunkeys; invested with the i-cal powers of sovereignty; and placidly admitted by all men, as if Nature and Heaven had so appointed it. to be in a sense godlike, to be royal, and fit to shine in the firmament, though their real worth is — what? Brick, do you know where human creatures reach the supreme of ugliness in Idols ? It were hard to know ! We can say only, All Idols have to tumble, and the hugest of them with the heaviest fall : that is our chief comfort, in America as here. '' The Idol of Somnauth, a mere mass of coarse crockery not worth five shillings of anybody's money, sat like a great staring god, with two diamonds for eyes ; worshipped by the neighboring black popula- tions; a terror and divine mystery to all mortals, till its day came. Till at last, victorious in the name of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, riding up with grim battle-axe and heart full of Moslem fire, took the liberty to smite once, with right force and rage, said ugly mass of idolatrous crockery; which thereupon shivered, with unmelodious crash and jin- gle, into a heap of ugly potsherds, yielding from its belly half a wagon-load of gold coins. Yuu can read it in Gibbon, — probably, too. in Lord Ellenborough. The gold coins, the diamond eyes, and other valuable extrinsic parts were carefully picked up by the Faith- ful ; confused jingle of intrinsic potsherds was left lying; — and the Idol of Somnauth once showing what it ivas^ had suddenly come to a conclusion ! Thus end all Idols, and intrinsically worthless man- mountains never so illuminated with diamonds, and 312 HUDSON S STATUE. filled with precious metals, and tremulously wor- shipped by the neighboring flunkey populations black or white ; — even thus, sooner or later, without fail ; and are shot hastily, as a heap of potsherds, into the highway, to be crunched under wagon-wheels, and do Macadam a little service, being clearly abolished as gods, and hidden from man's recognition, in that or other capacities, forever and a day ! ''You do not sufficiently bethink you, my repub- lican friend. Our ugliest anomalies are done by uni- versal suftVage, not by patent. The express nonsense of old Feudalism, even now, in its dotage, is as noth- ing to the involuntary nonsense of modern Anarchy called ' Freedom,' ' Republicanism,' and other fine names, which expresses itself by supply and demand ! Consider it a little. " The Bishop of our Diocese is to me an incredible man ; and has, I will grant you, very much more money than you or I would now give him for his work. One does not even read those Charges of his ; much preferring speech which is articulate. In fact, being intent on a quiet life, you generally keep on the other side of the hedge from him, and strictly leave him to his own fate. Not a credible man; — perhaps not quite a safe man to be concerned with ? But what think you of the ' Bobus of Houndsditch' of our parts? He, Sausage-maker on the great scale, knows the art of cutting fat bacon, and exposing it seasoned with gray pepper to adv^antage. Better than any other man he knows this art ; and I take the lib- erty to say it is a poor one. Well, the Bishop has an income of five thousand pounds appointed him for his work ; and Bobus, to such a length has he now Hudson's statue. 313 pushed the trade in sausages, gains from the universal suffrage of men's souls and stomachs ten thousand a year by it. "A poor art, tliis of Bobus's, I say ; and worth no such recompense. For it is not even good sausages he makes, but only extremely vendible ones ; the cuiniing dog ! Judges pronounce his sausages bad, and at the cheap price even dear ; and finer palates, it is whispered, have detected alarming symptoms of horsetlesh, or worse, under this cunningly devised gray-pepper spice of his ; so that for the world I would not eat one of his sausages, nor would you. You perceive he is not an excellent honest sausage- maker, but a dishonest cunning and scandalous sau- sage-maker ; worthy if he could get his deserts, who shall say what ? Probably certain shillings a-week, say forty; possibly (one shudders to think) a long round in the tread-mill, and stripes instead of shillings ! And yet what he gets, I tell you, from universal suf- frage and the unshackled ne-plus-ultra republican jus- tice of mankind, is twice the income of that anoma- lous Bishop 3A0U were talking of ! '^ The Bishop I for my part do much prefer to Bo- bus. The Bishop has human sense and breeding of various kinds ; considerable knowledge of Greek, if you should ever want the like of that ; knowledge of many things; and speaks the English language in a grammatical manner. He is bred to courtesy, to dig- nified composure, as to a second nature ; a gentleman every hbre of him ; which of itself is something very consideral)le. The Bishop does really diffuse round him an influence of decorum, courteous patience, solid adherence to what is settled; teaches practically the 344 necessity of ' burning one's own smoke ; ' and does practically in his own case burn said smoke, making lambent flame and mild illumination out of it, for tlie good of men in several particulars. While Bobus, for twice the annual money, — brings sausages, possi- bly of horseflesh, cheaper to market than anotlier! — Brick, if yon will reflect, it is not 'aristocratic Eng- land,' it is the united Posterity of Adam who are grown, in some essential respects, stupider than bar- bers' blocks. Barbers' blocks would at least say noth- ing, and not elevate, by their universal sufirages, an unfortunate Bobus to that bad height ! " Alas, if such, not in their loose tongues, but in their heart of hearts, is men's way of judging about social worth, what kind of ' new Aristocracy ' will the incon- ceivablest perfection of spoken SuflVage ever yield us ? Suff'rage, I perceive well, has quite other things in store for us ; we need not torment poor Suflrage for this thing ! Our Intermittent Friend says once : 'Men do not seem to be aware that this their uni- versal ousting of unjust, incapable and in fact imagi- nary Governors, is to issue in the attainment of Gov- ernors who have a r'trht and a capacity to govern. Far diflerent from that jc 'he issue men contemplate in their present revolutionary operations. Their univer- sal notion now is that we shall henceforth do without Governors ; that we have got to a new epoch in hu- man progress, in which Governing is entirely a super- fluity, and the attempt at doing it is an ofl'ence, think several. By that admirable invention of the Consti- tutional Parliament, first struck out in England, and now at length hotly striven for and zealously imitated in all European countries, the task of Government, HUDSO^^ S STATUE. 31) any task there may still be, is done to our hand. Perfect your Pailiament, cry all men : apply the Bal- lotboxaiid Universal SnfFrage ! the admirablest method ever imagined of counting lieads and gathering indu- bitable votes: you will thus gather the vote, vox or voice, of all the two-legged animals without feathers in your dominion ; what they think is what the gods think, — is it not ? — and this you shall go and do. ' Whereby, beyond dispute, your Governor's task is immensely simplified; and indeed the chief thing yon can now require of yo-ur Governor is that he care- fully preserve his good humor, and do in a handsome manner nothing, or some pleasant fugle-motions only. Is not this a '• machine ; " marking new epochs in the progress of discovery ? Machine for doing Govern- ment too, as we now do all things by " machinery." Only keep your free-presses, ballotboxes, upright-shafts and cogwork in an oiled unobstructed condition ; mo- tive-power of popular wind will do the rest. Here verily is a mill that beats Birmingham hollow ; and marks "new epochs" with a witness. What a hop- per this! Reap from all fields whatsoever you find standing, thistledowns, dockseed, hemlockseed, wheat, rye ; tumble all into the hopper, — see, in soft blissful continuous stream, meal shall daily issue for you, and the bread of life to mankind be sure ! ' — The aim of all reformers, parliamentary and other, is still defined by them as 'just legislation,' just laws ; with which definition who can quarrel ? They will not have 'class legislation,' which is a dreadfully bad thing ; but ' all-classes legislation,' I suppose, which is the right thing. Sure enough, just laws are an excel- lent attainment, t!ie first condition of all prosperity for 316 Hudson's statue. Iiiunan creatures: but few reflect how extremely dif- ficult surli attaiumeut is ! Alas, could we once get laws which were just, that is to say, which were the clear transcript of the Divine Laws of the Universe itself; so that each man were incessantly admonished, under strict penalties, by all men, to walk as the Eter- nal Maker had prescribed ; and he alone received hon- or whom the Maker had made honorable, and whom the Maker had made disgraceful, disgrace : alas, were not here the very ^Aristocracy' we seek? A new veritable Hierarchy of Heaven, — approximately such in very truth, — bringing Earth nearer and nearer to the blessed Law of Heaven. Heroic men, the Sent of Heaven, once more bore rule : and on the throne of kings there sat splendent, not King Hudson, or King Popinjay, but the Bravest of existing Men ; and on the gibbet there swung as a tragic pendulum, ad- monitory to Earth in the name of Heaven, — not some insignificant, abject, necessitous outcast, who liad vio- lently, in his extreme misery and darkness, stolen a leg of mutton, — but veritably the Supreme Scoundrel of the CommonAvealth, who in his insatiable greed and bottomless atrocity had long, hoodwinking the poor world, gone himself, and led multitudes to go, in the ways of gilded human baseness; seeking temporary profit (scrip, first-class claret, social honor, and the like small ware), where only eternal loss was possible ; and who now, stripped of all his gildings and cunningly- devised s})eciosities, swung there an ignominious de- tected scoundrel; testifying aloud to all the earth: " Be not scoundrels, not even gilt scoundrels, any one of you ; for God, and not the Devil, is verily king, and this is where it ends, if even this be the end of it I" Hudson's statue. 347 O Heaven, O Earth, what an -attainment' were here, could we but liope to see it! Reformed Parha- ment, People's League, Hume-Cobdeu agitation, tre- mendous cheers, new Battles ofNaseby, Frencii Revo- lution, and Horrors of French Revolution, — all things vv^ere cheap and light to the attainment of this. For this were in fact the millennium ; and indeed nothing less than this can be it. But I say it is dreadfully difficult to attain ! And though 'class-legislation ' is not it, yet, alas, neither is 'all-classes legislation' in the least certain to be it. All classes, if they happen not to be wise, heroic classes, — how, by the cunningest jumbling of them together, will you ever get a wisdom or heroism out of them ? Once more let me remind you, it is impossible forever. Unwisdom, contradiction to the gods : how, from the mere vamping together of hos- tile voracities and opacities, never so dexterously or copiously combined, can or could yon expect any thing else ? Can any man bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? No man. Voracities and opacities, blended together in never such cunningly devised proportions, will not yield noblenesses and illumina- tions ; they cannot do it. Parliamentary reform, ex- tension of the suffrage ? Good Heavens, how by the mere enlargement of your circle of ingredients, by the mere flinging in of new opacities and voraci- ties, will you have a better chance to distil a wisdom from that foul caldron, which is merely bigger, not by hypothesis better ? You will have abetter chance to distil 2rcro from it; evil elements from all sides, now more completely extinguishing one another, so that mutual destruction, like that of the Kilkenny 348 / HUDSo^•''s statue. cats, a PaHiament which produces parHamentary elo- quence only, and no social guidance, either bad or good, will be the issue, — as we now in these years sorrowfully ^ee. Universal suffrage : what a scheme to substitute for the revelation of God's eterngl Law, the official .dec- laration of the account of heads ! It is as if men' had abdicated their right to attempt following the above-said Law, and with melancholy resignation had agreed to give it up, and take temporary peace and good agreement as a substitute. In all departments of our affairs it is so, — literary, moral, political, social ; and in all of them it is and remains eternally wrong. In every department, literary, moral, political, social, the man that pretends to have, what is angrily called a choice of his own, which will mean at least some remnant of a feeling in him that Nature and Fact do still claim a choice of their own, and are like to make it good yet, — such man is felt as a kii}d of inter- loper and dissocial person, who obstructs the harmony of affairs, and is out of keeping with the universal- suffrage arrangement that has been entered upon. Why not decide it by dice ? Universal suffrage for your oracle is equivalent to flat despair of answer. Set up such oracle, you proclaim to all men : " Friends, there is in Nature no answer to your question ; and you don't believe in dice. Try to esteem this oracle a divine one, and be thankful that you can thereby keep the peace, and go with an answer from the shrine of chaotic Chance." Peace is good ; but woe to the cowardly caitiff of a man, or collection of cowardly caitiffs, styling them- HUDSON'S STATUE. selves Nation, tliat will have ' peace ' on these terms! They will save their ignoble skin at the expense of their eternal loyalty to the Highest God.. ^Peace? Better war to tlie knife, war till we all ^ie,. than such a 'peace.' Reject it, my friend, I advise thee; silently swear by God above, that, on Earth below, thou for thy part never wilt accept it. Be it forever far from us, my poor scattered friends. Let us fly to the rocks rather; and silently appealing to .the Eter- nal Heaven, await an hour which is full surely com- ing, when we too shall have grown to a respectable ' company of poor men,' authorized to rally, and with celestial lightning, and with terrestrial steel and such good weapons as there may be, spend all our blood upon it ! After all, Vviiy was not the Hudson Testimonial completed ? As Moses lifted up the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness, why was not Hudson's Statue lift- ed up ? Once more I say, it might have done us good. Thither too, in a sense, poor poison-stricken mortals might have looked, and found some healing! For many reasons, this alarming populace of British Statues wanted to have its chief. The liveliest type of Choice by Suffrage ever given. The consummate flower of universal Anarchy in the Commonwealth, and in the hea.rts of men : was not this Statue such a flower ; or dc we look for one more perfect and con- summate ? Of social Hierarchies, and Religions the parent of these, why speak, in presence of social Anarchy such SO 350 hudsoa's statue. as here symbolized! The Apotheosis of Hudson beckons to still deeper gulfs on the religious side of our affairs ; into which one shudders to look down. For the eye rests only on the blackness of darkness; and, shrnnk to hissing whispers, inaudible except to the finer ear, come moanings of the everlasting tem- pest, and tones of alti giiai. Nor is a certain vertigo quite absent from the strongest heads ; a mad impulse to fake the leap, then, and dwell with Eternal Death, since it seems to be the rule at present ! One hur- ried glance or two, — holding well by what parapets there still are ; — and then let us hasten to be srone. Worship, what Ave call human religion, has under- gone various phases in the history of mankind. To the primitive man all Forces of Nature were divine either for propitiation or for admiration, many things, and in a sense all things, demanded worship from him. But especially the Noble Human Soul was divine to him : and announced, as it ever does, with direct impressiveness, the Inspiration of the Highest; demanding worship from the primitive man. Where- by, as has been explained elsewhere, this latter form of worship, Hero-ioorship as we call it, did, among the ancient peoples, attract and subdue to itself all other forms of human worship ; irradiating them all with its own perennial worth, which indeed is all the worth they had, or that any worship can have. Hu- man worship everywhere, so far as there lay any worth in it, was of the nature of a Hero-worship ; this Universe wholly, this temporary Flame- image of the Eternal, was one beautiful and terrible Energy of Heroisms, presided over by a Divine Nobleness or Hudson's statue. 351 Infinite Hero. Divine Nobleness forever friendly to the noble, forever hostile to the ignoble : all manner of ' n:ioral rules,' and well ' sanctioned ' too, flowed nat- urally out of this primeval Intuition into Nature; — which, I believe, is still the true fountain of moral rules, though a much-forgotten one at present ; and indeed it seems to be the one unchangeable, eternally f/idnbitable ' Intuition into Nature ' Ave have yet heard of in these parts. To the primitive man, whether he looked at moral rule, or even at physical fact, there was nothing not divine. Flame was the God Loki, &c. ; this visible Universe was wholly the vesture of an Invisible Infi- nite ; every event that occurred in it a symbol of the immediate presence of God. Which it intrinsically 25, and forever will be, let poor stupid mortals remember or forget it ! The difference is, not that God has withdrawn ; but that men's minds have fallen hebe- tated, stupid, that their hearts are dead, awakening only to some life about meal -time and cookery-time ; and their eyes are grown dim, blinkard, a kind of horn-eyes like those of owls, available chiefly for catching mice. Most excellent Fitzsmithytrough, it is a long time since I have stopped short in admiring your stupendous railway miracles. I was obliged to strike work, and cease admiring in that direction. Yery stupendous mdeed ; considerable improvement in old roadways and wheel-and-axle carriages ; velocity unexpectedly great, distances attainable ditto ditto : all this is undeniable. But, alas, all this is still small deer for me, my excel- lent Fitzsmithytrough ; truly nothing more than an mexpected take of mice for the owlish part of you and 352 Hudson's statue. me. Distances, you iinfortLinate Fitz ? The distances of London to Aberdeen, to Ostend, to Vienna, are still infinitely inadeqnate to me ! Will you teach me the winged flight throngh Immensity, np to the Throne dark with excess of bright ? You unfortunate, you grin as an ape would at such a question ; you do not know that unless you ca^i reach thither in some efl'ec- tual, most veritable sense, you are a lost Fitzsmithy-" trough, doomed to Hela's death-realm and the Abyss where mere brutes are-buried. I do not want cheaper cotton, swifter railways; I want what Novalis calls 'God, Freedom, Immortality:' will swift railways, and sacrifices to Hudson, help me towards that? — As propitiation or as admiration, ' worship ' still con- tinues among men, will always continue ; and the phase it has in any given epoch may be taken as the ruling phenomenon which determines all others in that epoch. If Odin, who 'invented runes,' or literatures, and rhythmic logical speech, and taught men to despise death, is worshipped in one epoch ; and if Hudson, who conquered railway directors, and taught men to become suddenly rich by scrip, is worshipped in another, — the characters of these two epochs must difl^er a good deal ! Nay, the worst of some epochs is, they have along with their real worship an imagi- nary, and are conscious only of the latter as worship. They keep a set of gods or fetishes, reckoned respec- tahle, to which they mumble prayers, asking them- selves and others triumphantly, "Are not these re- spectable gods ? " and all the while their real worship, or heart's love and admiration, which alone is worship, concentrates itself on quite other gods and fetishes, — on Hudsons and scrips, for instance. Thus is the Hudson's statue. 353 miserable epoch rendered twice and tenfold miserable, and in a manner lost beyond redemption; having su- peradded to its stupid Idolatries, and brutish forgettings of the true God, which are leading it down daily towards ruin, an immense Hypocrisy, which is the quintessence of all idolatries and misbeliefs and un- beliefs, and taken refuge under that, as under a thing safe ! Europe generally has lain there a long time ; England I think for about two hundred years, spin- ning certain cottons notably the while, and thinking it all right, — which it was very far from being. But the time of accounts, slowly advancing, has arrived at last for Europe, and is knocking at the door of England too ; and it will be seen whether universal Make-believe can be the rule in English or human things; whether respectable Hebrew and other fetishes, combined with real worship of Yorkshire and other scrip, will answer the purpose here below or not ! It is certain, whatever gods or fetishes a man may have about him, and pay tithes to, and mumble prayers to, the real 'religion' that is in him is his practical Hero-worship. Whom or what do you in your very soul admire, and strive to imitate and emulate ; is it God's servant or the Devil's ? Clearly this is the whole question. There is no other religion in the man which can be of the slightest consequence in comparison. Theologies, doxologies, orthodoxies, heterodoxies, are not of moment except as subsidiary towards a good issue in this ; if they help well in it, they are good ; if not w.ell or at all, they are nothing or bad. This also is certain, Nations that do their Hero- worship well are blessed and victorious ; Nations that 354 Hudson's statue. do it ill are accursed, and in all fibres of their business grow daily more so, till their miserable afflictive and offensive situation becomes at least unendurable to Heaven and to Earth, and the so-called Nation, now an unhappy Populace of Misbelievers {niisci^eants was the old name), bursts into revolutionary tumult, and either reforms or else annihilates itself How other- wise ? Know whom to honor and emulate and follow ; know whom to dishonor and avoid, and coerce under hatches, as a foul rebellious thing : this is all the Law and all the Prophets. All conceivable evangels, bibles, homiletics, liturgies and litanies, and temporal and spiritual law-books for a man or a people, issue prac- tically there. Be right in that, essentially you are not wrong in anything : you read this Universe tolerably aright, and are in the way to interpret well what the will of its Maker is. Be wrong in that, had you lit- m-gies the recommendablest in Nature, and bodies of divinity as big as an Indiaman, it helps you not a whit; you are wrong in all things. How in any thing can you be right? You read this Universe in the inmost meanin": of it wrons: : orross idolatrous Misbelief is what I have to recognize in. you ; and, superadded, such a faith in the saving vir- tue of that deadliest of vices. Hypocrisy, as no People ever had before ! Beautiful recommendable liturgies ? Your liturgies, the recommendablest in Nature, are to me alarming and distressing ; a turning of the Cal- muck Prayer-mill, — not my way of praying. This immense asthmatic spiritual Hurdygurdy, issuing practically in a set of demigods like Hudson,- what is the good of it ; why will you keep grinding it under poor men's windows ? Since Hudson is Vishnu, let HUDSON S STATUE. 355 the Shasters and Yedas be conformable to him. Why chant divine psahns which belonged to a dilTerent Dispensation, and are now become idle and far worse ? Not melodions to me, snch a chant, in such a time ! The sound of it, if you are not quite dead to spiritual sounds, is frightful and bodeful. I say, this litany of yours, were the wretched populace and population never so unanimous and loud in it, is a thing no God can hear; your miserable 'religion,' as you call it, is an idolatry of the nature of Mumbojumbo, and T would advise you to discontinue it rather. You are Infidels, persons without faith ; not believing what is true but what is untrue ; Miscreants, as the old fathers Avell called you, — appointed too inevitably, unless you can repent and alter soon (of which I see no symptoms), to a fearful doom ! •'It was always so," you indolently say? No, Friend Heavyside, it was not always so, and even till lately was never so ; and I would much recornmend you to sweep that foolish notion, which you often fling at me. and always keep about you as one of your main consolations, quite out of your head. Once the notion was my own too; I know the notion very well ! And I will invite 3^ou to ask yourself in all ways. Whether it is not possibly a rather torpid and poison- ous, and likewise an altogether incorrect and delusive notion? Capable, I assure you, of being quite swept out of a man's head ; and greatly needing to be so, if the man would do any ' reform,' or other useful work, in this his day ! Till such notion go about its business, there cannot even be the attempt towards reform. Not so much as the pulling down, and melting into warming-pans, of those poor Brazen Representatives of Anarchy can be accomplished ; ,but they will stand there prophesying as now, '' Here is the 'New Aristocracy ' you want ; down on your knees, ye Christian souls ! " — O my friend, and after Hudson and the other Idols have quite gone to warming-pans, have you computed what agonistic centuries await us, before any ' New Aristocracy ' worth calling by the name of 'real,' can by likelihood prove attainable ? From the stormfal trampling down of Sham Human Worth, and casting it with Avrath and scorn into the meltingpot, onward to the silent sad repentant recognition of Real Human Worth, and the capability of again doing that some pious reverence, some reverence which were 7iot prac- tically worse than none : have you measured what an interval is there ? Centuries of desperate wrestle against Earth and Hell, on the part of all the brave men that are born. Too true this, though figuratively spoken ! Perilous tempestuous struggle and pilgrim- age, continual marching battle with the mud-ser- pents of this Earth and the demons of the Pit — cen- turies of such a marching fight (continually along the edge of Red Republic, too, and the Abyss) as brave men were not often called to in History before ! — And the brave men will not yet so much as gird on their harness ? They sit indolently saying, " It is already all as it can be, as it was wont to be ; and universal suflVage and tremendous cheers will manage it!" — Collins's old Peerage-Book, a dreadfully dull pro- duction, fills one with unspeakable reflections. Be- yond doubt a most dull production, one of the darkest Hudson's statue. 357 in the book kind ever realized by Chaos and man's brain ; and it is properly all we English have for a Biographical Dictionary; — nay, if yon think farther of it, for a National Bible. Friend Heavyside is much astonished ; but I see what I mean here, and have long seen. Clear away the dust from your eyes, and you will ask this question, What is the Bible of a Nation, the practically credited God's-Message to a Nation ? Is it not, beyond all else, the authentic Biography of its Heroic Souls? This is the real record of the Appearances of God in the History of a Nation ; this, which all men to the very marrow of their bones can believe, and which teaches all men what the nature of the' Universe, when you go to work in it, really is. What the Universe was thought to be in Judea and other places, this too may be very interesting to know: but what it is in England here where we live and have our work to do, that is the interesting point. — " The Universe ? " M'Crow- dy answers. " It is a huge dull Cattle-stall and St. Catherine's Wliarf; with a few pleasant apartments upstairs for those that can make money. Make money ; and don't bother about the Universe ! " That is M'Crowdy's notion ; reckoned a quiet, in- nocent and rather wholesome notion just now ; yet clearly fitter for a reflective pig than for a man ; — working continual damnation, therefore, however quiet it be ; and indeed I perceive it is one of the damnablest notions that ever came into the head of any ticoAegged animal without feathers in this" world. That is M'Crowdy's Bible; his Apology, poor fellow, for the Want of a Bible. But how, among so many Shakspeares, and think- 358 HUDS0^'''s statue. ers, and heroic singers, our National Bible should be in such a state j and how a poor dull Bookseller should have been left, — not to write in rhythmic coherency, worthy of a Poet and of all our Poeis, — but to shovel together, or indicate, in huge rubbish- mountains incondite as Chaos, the materials for writing such a Book of Books for England : this is abundantly amazing to me, and I wish much it could duly amaze us all. Literature has no nobler task ; — in fact it has that one task, and except it be idle rope- dancing, no other. ' The highest problem of Liter- ature,' says Novalis, very justly, 'is the Writing of a Bible.' Nevertheless, among these dust-mountains, with their antiquarian excerpts and sepulchral brasses, it is astonishing what strange fragments you do turn up, miraculous talismans to a reader that will think, — windows through which an old sunk world, as yet all built upon veracity, and full of rugged nobleness, become visible ; to the mute wonder of the modern mind. It struck me much, that of these ancient jDcerages a very great majority had visibly had authen- tic ' heroes ' for their founders ; noble men, of whose worth no clearsighted King could be in doubt ; and that, in their descendants too, there did not cease a strain of heroism for some time, — the peership gen- erally dying out, and disappearing, not long after that ceased. What a world, tliat old sunk one ,* Real Governors go'^erning in it; Shams not yet anywhere recognized as tolerable in it ! A world whose prac- tical president was not Chaos with ballotboxes, whose outcome was not Anarchy ^/z^s a street-constable. In how high and true a sense, the Almighty with con- Hudson's statue. 353 tiniial enforcement of his Laws still presided there ; and in all things as yet there was some degree of blessedness and nobleness there ! One's heart is sore to think how far, how very far all this has vanished from ns ; how the very tradi- tion of it has disappeared ; and it has ceased .to be credible, to seem desirable. Till the like of it retnrn, — yes, my constitntional friend, such is the sad fact, till the like of it, in new form, adapted to the new times, be again achieved by us ; we are not properly a society at all ; we are a lost gregarions horde, with Kings of Scrip on this hand, and Famishing Con- naughts and Distressed Needlewomen on that, — pre- sided over by the Anarch Old. A lost horde, — who, in bitter feeling of the intolerable injustice that presses upon all men, will not long be able to con- tinue even gregarions; but will have to split into street-barricades, and internecine battle with one another ; and to fight, if wisdom for some new real Peerage be not granted us, till we all die. mutually butchered, and 50 rest, — so if not otherwise! Till the time of James the First, I find that real heroic merit more or less was actually the origin of peerages ; never, till towards the end of that bad reign were peerages bargained for, or bestowed on men palpably of no worth except their money or con- nection. But the evil practice, once begun, spread rapidly ; and now the Peerage-Book is what we see ; — a thing miraculous in the other extreme. A kind of Proteus' flock, very curious to meet upon the lofty mountains, so many of them being natives of the deep ! — Our menagerie of live Peers in Parliament SCO Hudson's statue. is like that of our Brazen Statues in the market- place ; the selection seemingly is made much in the same way, and with the same degree of felicity, and successful accuracy in choice. Our one steady reg- ulated supply is the class definable as Supreme Stump- Orators in the Lawyer department : the class called Chancellors flows by something like fixed conduits towards the Peerage ; the rest, like our Brazen Statues, come by popular rule-of-thumb. Stump-Orators, supreme or other, are not beautiful to me in these days : but the immense power of Law- yers among us is sufficiently intelligible. I perceive, it proceeds from two causes. First, they preside over the management and security of ' Property,' which is our God at present ; they are thus properly our Pon- tifls, the highest Priests we have. Then furthermore, tliey possess the talent most valued, that of the Tongue ; and seem to us the most gifted of our in- telligences, thereby provoking a spontaneous loyalty and worship. What think you of a country whose kings go by genealogy, and are the descendants of successful Law- yers ? A poor weather-worn, tanned, curried, wind- dried human creature, called a Chancellor, all or almost all gone to horsehair and officialty ; the whole existence of him tanned, by long maceration, public exposure, tugging and manipulation, to the toughness of Yorkshire leather, — meseems I have seen a beau- tifuller man ! Not a leather man would I by prefer- ence appoint to beget my kings. Not lovely to me is the leather species of men ; to whose tanned soul God's Universe has become a jangling logic-cockpit and little other. If indeed it have not become far Hudson's statue. 3o1 less and worse : for the wretched tanned Chancellor, I am told, is usually acquainted with the art of lying too, — considerable part of his trade, as I have been informed, is the talent of lying in a way that cannot be laid hold of ; a dreadful trick to learn ! Out of such a man there cannot be expected much ' revela- tion of the Beautiful,' I should say. — O Bull, were I in your place, I would try either to get other Peers, or else to abolish the concern, — which latter, indeed, by your acquiescence in such nominations, and by many other symptoms, I judge to be unconsciously yoiu' fixed intention. You have seen many Chancellors made Peers in these late generations, Mr. Bull. And now tell me, Which was the Chancellor you did really love or honor, to any remarkable degree ? Alas, you never within authentic memory loved any of them; you couldn't, no man could ! You lazily stared with some semblance of admiration at the big wig, huge purse, reputation for divine talent, and sublime proficiency in the art of tongue-fence : but to love him, — that, Mr. Bull, was once for all a thing you could not manage. Who of the seed of Adam could ? From the time of Chancellor Bacon downwards (and beyond that your Chancellors are dark to you as the Muftis of Constan- tinople), I challenge you to show me one Chancellor for whom, had the wigs, purses, reputations, &c. been peeled off him, you would have given his weight in Smithfield beef-sinking offal. You unhappy Bull, gov- erned by Kings you have not the smallest regard for; wandering in an extinct world of wearisome, oppressive and expensive shadows, — nothing real in it but the Smithfield beef, nothing preternatural in it but the 31 362 HUDSON S STATUE. Chartisms and threatened street-barricades, and this not celestial but infernal ! Sure enough, I find, O Ileavyside, England once was a Hierarchy ; as every Human Society, not either dead or else hastening towards death, always is: but it has long ceased to be so to any tolerable degree of perfection ; and is now, by its Hudson and other Testimonials, testifying in a silent way to the thoughtful, what otherwise, by its thousaiidfold an- archic depravities, miseries, god-forgettings and open devil-worships it has long loudly taught them to ex- pect, that we are now wending towards the culmina- tion in this particular. That to the modern English populations, Supreme Hero and Supreme Scoundrel are, perhaps as nearly as is possible to human crea- tures, indistinguishable. That it is totally uncertain,- perhaps even tiie odds against you, whether the figure whom said population mount to the place of honor, is not in Nature and Fact f/2.9honorable ; whether the man to whom they raise a column does not deserve a coalshaft. And in fine, poor devils, that their univer- sal suffrage, as spoken, as acted, meditated, and im- agined ; universal suffrage, — I do not say ballot- boxed and cunningly constitutionalized, but boiled, distilled, digested, quintessenced, till you get into the very heart's heart ,of it,- — is, to tlie rational soul, except for stock-exchange, and the like very humble practical purposes, worth express zcro^ or nearly so. I think probably as near zero as the unassisted human faculties and destinies ever came, or are like to come. Hierarchy? O Heaven! \( Chaos himself sat umpire, what better could he do ? Here are a set HUDSON'S STATUE. 363 of human demigods, as if chosen to his hand. Hie- rarchy with a vengeance; — if instead of God, a vulpine beggarly Beelzebub or swollen Mammon were our Supreme Hicros or Holy, this would be a Hierarchy! I say, if you want Chaos for your mas- ter, adopt this ; — if you don't, I beg you make haste to adopt some other ; for this is the broad way to him ! The Eternal Anarch, with his old waggling addle-head full of mere windy rumor, and his old insatiable paunch full of mere hunger and indigestion tragically blended, and the hissing discord of all the Four Elements persuasively pleading to him ; — he, set to choose, would be very apt to vote for such » set of demigods to you. As to the Statues, I know they are but symptoms of Anarchy ; it is not they, it is the Anarchy, that one is anxious to see abated. Remedy for the Stat- ues will be possible; and, as a-small help, undoubt- edly it too, in the mean time, is desirable. Every symptom you drive-in being a curtailment of the malady, by all means cure this Statue-building if you can ! It will be one folly and misery less. Government is loath to interfere with the pursuits of any class of citizens ; and oftenest looks on in silence while follies are committed. But Government does interfere to prevent afflictive accumulations on the streets,^ malodorous or other unsanitary public procedures of an extensive sort ; regulates gullydrains, cesspools; prohibits the piling-up of dungheaps, and 364 Hudson's statue. is especially strict on the matter of indecent ex- posures. Wherever the heahh of the citizens is concerned, much more where their soul's heaUh, and as it were their very salvation is concerned, all Gov- ernments that are not chimerical make haste to interfere. Now if dungheaps laid on the streets, afflictive to the mere nostrils, are a suhject for interference, what, we ask, are high columns, raised by prurient stupidity and public delusion, to blockheads whose memory does in eternal fact deserve the sinking of a' coalshaft rather.^ Give to every one what he deserves, what really is his ; in all scenes and situations thou shalt do that, — or in very truth woe will betide thee, as sure as thou art living, and as thy Maker lives. Blockhead, this big Gambler swollen to the edge of bursting, he is not ' great ' and honorable ; he is huge and abominable ! Thou shalt honor the right man, and not honor the wrong, under penalties of an alarming nature. Honor Barabbas the Robber, thou shalt sell old-clothes through the cities of the world ; shalt accumulate sordid moneys, with a curse on every coin of them, and be spit upon for eighteen hundred years. Raise statues to the swollen Gambler as if he were great, sacrifice oblations to the King of Scrip, — unfortunate mortals, you will dearly pay for it yet. Quiet as Na- ture's countinghouse and scrip-legers are, no faintest item is ever blotted out from them, for or against ; and to the last doit that account too will have to be settled. Rigorous as Destiny; — she is Destiny. Chancery or Fetter Lane is soft to her, when the day of settlement comes. With her, in the way of abate- ment, of oblivion, neither gods nor men prevail. Hudson's statue. 365 " Abatement ? That is not our way of doing busi- ness ; the time has run out, the debt it appears is due." AV'ill the law of gravitation ' abate ' for you ? Gravita- tion acts at the rate of sixteen feet per second, in spite of all prayers. Were it the crash of a Solar System, or the fall of a Yarmouth Herring, all one to gravitation. ' Is the fall of a stone certain ; and the fruit of an unwisdom doubtful ? You unfortunate beings ! Have you forgotten it ; in this inmiense improvement of machinery, cheapening of cotton, and general aston- ishing progress of the species lately? With such extension of journals, human cultures, universities, periodic and other literatures, mechanics' institutes, reform of prison-discipline, abolition of capital punish- ment, enfranchisement by ballot, report of parliament- ary speeches, and singing for the million ? You did not know that the Universe had laivs of right and wrong ; you lancied the Universe was an oblivious greedy blockhead, like one of yourselves; attentive to scrip mainly; and willing, where there was no practical scrip, to forget and forgive ? And so, amid such uni- versal blossoming-forth of useful knowledges, mirac- ulous to the thinking editor everywhere, — the soul of all 'knowledge,' not knowing which a man is dark and reduced to the condition of a beaver, has been omitted by you ? You have omitted it, and you should have included it ! The thinking editor never missed it, so busy wondering and worshipping else- where ; but it is not liere. And alas, apart from editors, are there not men ap- pointed specially to keep you in mind of it ; solemnly set apart for that object, thousands of years ago ! Crabbe, descanting ' on the so-called Christian Clerus^'* 31* 866 Hudson's statue. has this wild passage : ' Legions of them, in their black or other gowns, I still meet in every country ; masquerading, in strange costume of body, and still stranger of soul ; mumming, primming, grimacing, — ■ poor devils, shamming, and endeavoring not to sham : that is the sad fact. Brave men many of them, after their sort ; and in a position which we may admit to be wonderful and dreadful ! On the outside of their heads some singular headgear, tulip-mitre, felt coal- scuttle, purple hat ; and in the inside, — I must say, such a Theory of God Almighty's Universe as I, for my share, am right thankful to have no concern with at all ! I think, on the whole, as broken-winged, self-strangled, monstrous a mass of incoherent incredi- bilities, as ever dwelt in the human brain before. O God, giver of Light, hater of Darkness, of Hypocrisy and Cowardice, how long, how long! 'For two centuries now it lasts. The men whom God has made, Avhole nations and generations of them, are steeped in Hypocrisy from their birth upwards; taught that external varnish is the chief duty of man, — that the vice which is the deepest in Gehenna is the virtue highest in Heaven. Out of which, do you ask what follows ? Look round on a world all bris- tling with insurrectionary pikes; Kings and Papas flying like detected coiners ; and in their stead Icaria, Red Republic, new religion of the Anti-Virgin, liit- erature of Desperation curiously conjoined with Phal- lus-Worship, too clearly heralding centuries of bot- tomless Anarchy : hitherto one in the million looking with mournful recognition on it, silently with sad thoughts too unutterable ; and to help in healing it not one anywhere hitherto.' — Hudson's statue. 387 But as to Statues, I really think the Woods-and- Forests ought to interfere. When a company of per- sons have determined -to set up a Brazen Image, there decidedly arises, besides the question of their own five-pound subscriptions, which men of spirit and money-capital without employment, and with a pros- pect of seeing their names in the Newspapers at the cheap price of five pounds, are very prompt with, — anotiier question, not nearly so easy of solution. Namely, this quite preliminary question : Will it per- manently profit mankind to liave such a Hero as this of yours set up for their admiration, for their imita- tion and emulation ; or will it, so far as they da not reject and with /success disregard it altogether, un- speakably tend to damage and disprofit them ? In a word, does this Hero's memory deserve a high col- umn ; are you sure it does not deserve a deep coal- shaft rather ? This is an entirely fundamental ques- tion ! Till this question be answered well in the affirmative, there ought to be a total stop of progress ; the misguided citizens ought to be admonished, and even gently constrained, to take back their five-pound notes; to desist from their rash deleterious enterprise, and retire to their affairs, a repentant body of mis- guided citizens. But farther still, and supposing the first question perfectly disposed of, there comes a second, grave too, though much less peremptory: Is this Statue of yours a worthy commemoration of a sacred man? Is it so excellent in point of Art that we can, with credit, set it up in our market-places as a respectable approach to the Ideal ? Or, alas, is it not such an amorphous 368 HrDsoN's statue. brazen sooterkin, bred of prurient heat and darkness, as falls, if well seen into, far below the Real ? The Real, if you will stand by it, is respectable. The coarsest hob-nailed pair of shoes, if honestly made according to the laws of fact and leather, are not ugly: they are honest, and fit fur their object; the highest eye may look on them without displeasure, nay with a kind of satisfaction. This rude packing- case, it is faithfully made; square to the rule, and formed with rough and ready strength against injury; — fit for its use ; not a pretensions hi/pocrisj/, but a modest, serviceable fact ; whoever pleases to look upon it, will find the image of an humble manfulness in it, and will pass on with some infinitesimal im- pulse to thank the gods. But this your ' Ideal,' my misguided fellow-citi- zens ? Good Heavens, are you in the least aware what damage, in the very sources of their existence, men get from Cockney Sooterkins saluting them publicly as models of Beauty ? I charitably feel you have not the smallest notion of it, or yen would shriek at the proposal ! Can you, my misguided friends, think it humane to set up, in its present uncomfortable form, this blotch of mismclten copper and zinc, out of which good warming-pans miglit be made? That all men should see this ; innocent young creatures, still in arms, be taught to think this beautiful ; — and per- haps women in an interesting situation look up to it as they pass ? I put it to your religious feeling, to your principles as men and fathers of families ! These questions tlie Woods-and-Forests, or some Public Tribunal constituted for the purpose, really Hudson's statue. 369 onglit to ask, in a deliberate speaking manner, on the part of the speecliless suffering Populations : it is the preliminary of all useful Statue-building. Till both these questions are well a^nswered, the VVoods-and- Forests should refuse permission ; advise the mis- guided citizens to go home and repent. Really, il this Statue-humor go on, and grow as it has lately done, there will be such a Pubhc-Statue Board requi- site ; or the Woods-and-Forests will hav^e to interfere, with such impierfect law as now is. The Woods-and-Forests, or if not they, then the Commissioners of Sewers, Sanitary Board, Scavenger Board, Cleansing Committee, or whoever holds or can usurp a little of the a3dile authority, — cannot some of them, in the name of sense and common decency, interfere at least thus far ? Namely, to admonish the misguided citizens, subscribers to the next Brazen Monster, or sad sculptural solecism, the emblem of far sadder moral ones ; and exhort them, three successive times, to make warming-pans of it and repent ; — or failing that, finding them obstinate, to say with au- thority : "Well then, persist; set up your Brazen Calf, ye misguided citizens, and worship it, you, since you will and can. But observe, let it be done in se- cret : not in public ; we say, in secret, at your peril ! You have pleased to create a new Monster into this world ; but to make him patent to public view, we for our part beg not to please. Observe, there- fore. Build a high enough brick case or joss-house for your Brazen Calf; with undiaphanous walls, and lighted by sky-windows only : put your Monster into that, and keep him there. Thither go at your pleas- 370 Hudson's statue. lire, there assemble yourselves, and worship your bel- lyful, you absurd idolaters ; ruin your own souls only, and leave the poor population alone ; the jioor speech- less unconscious Population whom we are bound to protect, and will ! " To this extent, I think the Woods-and-Forests might reasonably interfere. JESUITISM. As in the history of human things, which needs above all to abridge itself, it happens usually that the chief actors in great events and great epochs give their name to the series, and are loosely reputed the causers and authors of them ; as a German Reformation is called of Luther, and a French Reign of Terror passes for the work of Robespierre, and from the ^neid and earlier this has been the wont : so it may be said these current, and now happily moribund, times of ours are wortliy to be called, in loose lan- guage, the Age of Jesuitism, — an epoch whose Pali- nurus is the wretched mortal known among men as Ignatius Loyola. For some two centuries the genius of mankind has been dominated by the gospel of Ig- natius, perhaps the strangest and certainly among the fatallest ever preached hitherto under the sun. Some acquaintance, out of Bartoli and others, I have made with that individual, and from old years have studied the workings of him ; and to me he seems historically definable, he more than another, as the poison-foun- tain from which these rivers of bitterness that now submerge the world have flowed. Counting from the ' ever-blessed Restoration,' or the advent of that singular new Defender of the Faith 372 JESUITIS3I. callc^d Charles Second, it is about two hundred years since we ourselves commenced that bad course ; and deeply detesting the name of Saint Ignatius, did nevertheless gradually adopt his gospel as the real revelation of Gcd's will, and the solid rule of living in this world ; rule long since grown perfectly ac- credited, complete in all its parts, and reigning su- preme among us in all spiritual and social matters whatsoever. The singular gospel, or revelation of God's will ! That to please the supreme Fountain of Truth your readiest method, now and then, was to persist in believing what your whole soul found to be doubtful or incredible. That poor human symbols were higher than the God Almighty's facts they sym- bolized ; that formulas, with or without the facts symbolized by them, were sacred and salutary; that formulas, well persisted in, could still save us when the facts were all fled ! A new revelation to man- kind ; not heard of in human experience, till Ignatius revealed it to us. That, in substance, was the con- tribution of Ignatius to the wellbeing of mankind. Under that thrice-stygian gospel we have all of us, Papist and at length Protestant too, this long while sat ; a ' doctrine of devils,' I do think, if there ever was one ; — and are now, ever since 17S9, with end- less misery and astonishment, confusedly awakening out of the same, uncertain whether towards swift agony of social death, or towards slow martyrdom of recovery into spiritual and social life. Not that poor Loyola did all the feat himself, — any more than Luther, Robespierre, and other such did in the parallel cases. By no means. Not in his poor JESUITISM. 373 person sliall the wretched Loyola bear the guilt of poisoiiiijg the world : the world was, as it were, in quest of poison ; in the sure course of being poisoned ; and would have got it done by some one : Loy- ola is the historical symbol to us of its being done. The most conspicuous and ostentatious of the world's poisoners; who, solemnly consecrating all the rest in the name of Holiness or Spiritual Health, has got the work of poisoning to go on with never-imagined com- jjleteness and acceleration in all quarters; and is worthy to have it called after him a Jesuitism, and be blamed by men (how judged by God, we know not) for doing it. That it is done, there is the sad fact for us ; which infinitely concerns every living soul of us ; what Ignatius got or is to get for doing it, — this shall not concern us at all. And so, before dismissing busy English readers to their autumnal grouse-shooting, — the ramadhan, sa- cred fast, or month of meditative solitude and devout prayer, now in use among the English, — I have one sad thing to do : lead them a little to the survey of Ignatius and our universal Jesuitism ; and ask them, in Heaven's name, if they will answer such a ques- tion. What they think of it, and of their share in it ? For this is the central and parent phenomenon ; the great Tartarean Deep, this, whence all our miseries, fatuities, futilities spring ; the accursed Hela's realm, tenanted by foul creatures, ministers of Death Eter- nal, out of which poor mortals, each for himself, are called to escape if they can ! Who is there that can escape ; that can become alive to the terrible neces- 32 374 JESUITISM. sity of escaping? — By way of finish to this ofFen sive and alarming set of Pamphlets, I have still oyil crowning offence and alarm to try if I can give. The message, namely, That under all those Cannibal Con- naughts, Distressed Needlewomen, and other woes nigh grown intolerable, there lies a still deeper Infinite of woe, and guilt, chargeable on every one of us ; and that till this abate, essentially those never will or can. • That our English solitaries, any noticeable number of them, in their grouse ramadhan, or elsewhere, will accept the message, and see this thing for my poor showing, is more than I expect. Not willingly or joyfully do men become conscious that they are afloat, they and their affairs, upon the Pool of Erebus, now nameless in polite speech ; and that all their miseries, social and private, are fountains springing out of that, and like to spring perennially with evei' more copious- ness, till once you get away from that! And yet who knows ? Here and there a thinking English soul, the reflection, the devotion, not yet quite deaf- ened out of him by perpetual noise and babble ; such a soul, — left silent in the solitude of some Highland corry, waiting perhaps till the gillies drive his deer up to^him, — may catch a glimpse of it, take a thought of it ; may prosecute his thought ; fling down, with terror, his Joe-Manton and percussion-caps, and fly to a better kind of ramadhan^ towards another kind of life ! Sure enough, if one in the thousand see at all, in this sad matter, what I see and have long seen in it, his life eitlier suddenly or gradually will alter in several particulars ; and his sorrow, apprehension and amazement will probably grow upon hini, the longer JESUITISM. 375 he considers this affair ; and his life, I think, will al- ter ever farther ; — and he, this one in a thousand, will forgive me^ and be thankful to the Heavens and me, while he continues in this world or in any world ! — The Spiritual, it is still often said, but is not now sufficiently considered, is the parent and first-cause of the Practical. The Spiritual everywhere originates the Practical, models it, makes it : so that the saddest external condition of affairs, amoog men, is but evi- dence of a still sadder internal one. For as thought is the life-fountain and motive-soul of action, so, in all regions of this human world, whatever outward thing offers itself to the eye, is merely the garment or body of a thing which already existed invisibly within ; which, striving to give itself expression, has found, in the given circumstances, that it could and would express itself — so. This is everywhere true; and in these times when men's attention is directed outward rather, this deserves far more attention than it will receive. Do you ask why misery abounds among us ? I bid you look into the notion we have formed for ourselves of this Universe, and of our duties and destinies there. If it is a true notion, we shall strenuously reduce it to practice, — for who dare or can contradict his faith, whatever it may be, in the Eternal Fact that is around him? — and thereby blessings and success will attend us in said Universe, or Eternal Fact we live amidst : of that surely there is no doubt. All levelations and intimations, heavenly and earthly, assure us of that ; 376 JESUITISM. only a Philosophy of Bedlam could throw a doubt on that ! Blessings and success, most surely, if our notion of this Universe, and our battle in it be a true one ; not curses and futilities, except it be not true. For battle, in any case, I think we shall not want ; harsh wounds, and the heat of the day, we shall have to stand : but it will be a noble godlike and human battle, not an ignoble devil-like and brutal one ; and our wounds, and sore toils (what we in our impatience call 'miseries'), will themselves be blessed to us. But if, on the other hand, it were a false notion Avhich we believed ; alas, if it were even a false no- tion which we only pretended to believe ? What battle can there be, in that latter fatal case ! Our faith, or notion of this Universe, is not false only, but it is the father of falsity ; a thing that destroys itself, and is equivalent to the death of all notion, all belief or motive to action, except what the appetites and the astucities may yield. We have then the thrice-bale- ful Universe of Cant, prophesied for these Latter Days ; and no ' battle,' but a kind of bigger Donny- brook one, is possible for hapless mortals till that alter. Faith, Fact, Performance, in all high and grad- ually in all low departments, go about their business; Inanity well tailored and upholstered, mild-spoken Ambiguity, decorous Hypocrisy which is astonished you should think it hypocritical, taking their room and drawing their wages: from zenith to nadir, you have Cant, Cant, — a Universe of Incredibilities which are not even credited, Avhich each man at best only tiies to persuade himself that he credits. Do you expect a divine battle, with noble victories, out of JESUITISM. 377 this ? I expect a Hudson's Statue from it, brisk trade in scrip, with Distressed Needlewomen, Cannibal Con- naughts, and other the like phenomena, such as we now everywhere see ! Indisputably enough, what notion each forms of the Universe is the all-regulating fact with regard to bim. The Universe makes no immediate objection to be conceived in anyway; pictures itself as plainly in the seeing faculty of Newton's Dog Diamond, as of Newton ; and yields to each a result accurately cor- responding. To the Dog Diamond dogs'-meat, with its adjuncts, better or worse ; to Newton discovery of the System of the Stars. — Not the Universe's affair at all ; but the seeing party's affair very much, for the results to each correspond, with exact propor- tion, to his notion of it. The saddest condition of human affairs, what an- cient Prophets denounced as ' the Throne of Iniquity,' where men 'decree injustice by a law : ' all this, with its thousandfold outer miseries, is still but a s^anp- torn ; all this points to a far sadder disease which lies invisible within! In new dialect, whatever modified interpretation we may put upon it, the same must be said as in old : ' God's judgments are abroad in the world ; ' and it would much behove many of us to know well that the essential fact lies there and not elsewhere. If we ' sin against God,' it is most cer- tain ' God's judgments' will overtake us; and wheth- er we recognize them as God's message like men, or merely rage and writhe under them like dogs, and in our blind agony, each imputing it to his neighbor, tear one another in pieces under them, it is certain 32* 378 JESUITISM. they will continue upon ns, till we either cease ' sin- ning,' or are all torn in pieces and annihilated. Wide-spread suffering, mutiny and delirium ; the hot rage of sansculottic Insurrections, the cold rage of resuscitated Tyrannies; the brutal degradation of the millions, the pampered frivolity of the units; that awful unheeded spectacle, 'the Throne of Iniquity decreeing iujustice by a law,' as the just eye can see it everywhere doing : — certainly something must be wrong in the inner man of the world, since its outer man is so terribly out of square! The deliverer of the world, therefore, were not he who headed sans- culottic insurrections never so successful, but he who pointed out to the world what niglitmares were rest- ing over its soul. Ignatius Loyola, and the innumer- able company. Papist, Protestant, Sliamchristian, Anti- christian, that have believed his revelation; universal prevalence, from pole to pole, of such a 'doctrine of devils ; ' reverent or quasi-reverent faith in the dead human formulas, and somnolent contempt of the di- vine ever-living facts, such as reigns now, consecrated and supreme, in all commonwealths and countries, and hearts of men ; the Human Species, as it were, imconsciously or consciously, gone all to one Sodality of Jesuitism : who will deliver us from the body of this death ! It is in truth like death-in-life ; a living criminal (as in the old Roman days) with a corpse lashed fast to him. What wretch could have deserved such a doom ? As to this Ignatius, I am aware he is admired, and even transcendently admired, or what we call worship- JESUITISM. 379 ped. bv multitudes of human creatures, who to this day expect, or endeavor to expect, some kind of sal- vation tVom him; — wlioni it is so painful to enrage agai):st me, if I could avoid it ! Undoubtedly Igna- tius, centuries ago, gave satisfaction to the Devil's Adv^ocate, the Pope and other parties interested : was canonized, named Saint, and raised duly into Heaven oflicially so-called ; whereupon, with many, he passes, ever since, for a kind of god, or person who has much intiuence with the gods. — Alas, the admira- tion, and transcendent admiration, of mankind, goes a strange road in these times! Hudson too had his canonization: and by Vo.v Populi, if not by Pope and Devil's Advocate, was raised to a kind of brass Olym- pus by mankind ; and rode there for a year or two ; — though he is already gone to warming-pans again. A p'Oor man, in our day, has many gods foisted on him ; and big voices bid him, " Worship, or be ! ■' in a menacing and confusing manner. What shall he do ? By far the greater part of said gods, current in the public, whether canonized by Pope or Populus, are mere dumb Apises and • beatified Prize-oxen; — nay some of them, who have articulate faculty, are devils instead of gods. A poor man that would save liis soul alive is reduced to the sad necessity of sharp- ly trying his gods whether they are divine or not ; \\'hich is a terrible pass for mankind, and lays an awful problem upon each man. The man must do it, however. At his own peril he will have to do this problem too, which is one of the awfnllest ; and his neighbors, all but a most select portion of them, portion generally not clad in official tiaras, can be of 380 JESUITISM. next to no help to him in it, nay rather will infinitely hinder him in it, as matters go. If Ignatius, worship- ped by millions as a kind of god. is, in eternal fact, a kind of devil, or enemy of whatsoever is godlike in man's existence, surely it is pressingly expedient that men were made aware of it ; that men, with what- ever earnestness is yet in them, laid it awfully to heart ! Prim friend with the black serge gown, with the rosary, scapnlary, and I know not what other spirit- ual block-and-tackle, — scowl not on me. If in thy poor heart, under its rosaries, there dwell any human piety, awestruck reverence towards the Supreme Maker, de^rout compassion towards this poor Earth and her sons, — scowl not anathema on me, listen to me ; for I swear thou art my brother, in spite of ro- saries and scapularies ; and I recognize thee, though thou canst not me ; and with love and pity know thee for a brother, though enchanted into the con- dition of a spiritual mummy. Hapless creature, curse me not ; listen to me, and consider; — perhaps even thou wilt escape from mummyhood, and become once more a living soul ! Of Ignatius, then, I must take leave to say, there can this be recorded, that probably he has done more mischief in the Earth than any man born since. A scandalous mortal, O brethren of mankind who live by truth and not by falsity, I must call this man. Altogether, — here where I stand, looking on millions of poor pious brothers reduced to spiritual mummy- hood, who curse me because I try to speak the truth JESUITISM. 381 to them, and on a whole world canting and grimacing from birth to death, and finding in their life two seri- ous indnbitabilities, Cookery and Scrip, — how, if he is the representative and chief fountain of all this, can I call him other than the superlative of scandals? A bad man, I think ; not good by nature-; and by des- tiny swollen into a very Ahriman of badness. Not good by nature, I perceive. A man born greedy; whose greatness in the beginning, and even in the end if we will look well, is indicated chiefly by the depth of his appetite : not the recommendable kind of man ! A man full of prurient elements from the first ; which at the last, through his long course, have developed themselves over the family of man- kind into an expression altogether tremendous. A young Spanish soldier and hidalgo with hot Bis- cayan blood, distinguished, as I understand, by his fierce appetites chiefly, by his audacities and sensu- alities, and loud unreasonable decision That this Uni- verse, in spite of rumors to the contrary, was a Cookery-shop and Bordel, wherein garlic, Jamaica- pepper, unfortunate-females and other spicery and garnishing aAvaited the bold human appetite, and the rest of it was mere rumor and moonshine: with this life-theory and practice had Ignatius lived some thirty years, a hot human Papin's-digester and little oth- er ; when, on the walls of Pampeluna, the destined cannon-shot shattered both his legs. — leaving: his head, hitting only his legs, so the Destinies would have it, — and he fell at once totally prostrate, a wrecked Papin's-digester ; lay many weeks horizon- tal, and had in that tedious posture to commence a 3S2 JESUITISM. new series of reflections. He began to perceive now that ' tlie rest of it ' was not mere rumor and moon- shine ; that the rest was, in fact, the whole secret of the matter. That the Cookery-shop and Bordel was a magical delnsion, a sleight-of-hand of Satan, to lead Ignatius down, by garlic and finer temporal spiceries, to eternal Hell ; — and that in short he, Ignatius, had lived hitherto as a degraded ferocious Human Pig, one of the most perfect scoundrels ; and was, at that date, no other than a blot on Creation, and a scandal to mankind. With which set of reflections who could quarrel ? The reflections were true, were salutary ; nay there was something of sacred in them, — as in the repentance of man, in the discovery by erring man that wrong is not right, that wrong diff'ers from right as deep as Hell from high Heaven, there ever is. Ignatius's soul was in convulsions, in agonies of newbirth ; for which I honor Ignatius. Human sincerity could not but have told him: "Yes, in several respects, thou art a detestable Human Pig, and disgrace to the family of man ; for which it behoves thee to be in nameless remorse, till thy life either mend or end. Consider, there as thou liest with thy two legs smashed, the peccant element that is in thee : dis- cover it, rigorously tear it out; reflect what further thou wilt do. A life yet remains ; to be led, clearly, in some new manner : how wilt thou lead it ? Sit silent for the rest of thy days ? In some modest seclu- sion, hide thyself from a human kind which has been dishonored by thee ? Thy sin being pruriency of appetite, give that at least no farther scope under any old or new form ? " JESUITISM. 383 I admit, the question was not easy. Think, in this his wrecked horizontal position, what could or should the poor individual called Inigo, Ignatius, or whatever the first name of him was, have done ? Truly for Ignatius the question was very complicated. But, had he asked from Nature and the Eternal Oracles a remedy for wrecked sensualism, here surely was one thing that would have suggested itself: To annihilate his pruriency. To cower, silent and ashamed, into some dim corner ; and resolve to make henceforth as little noise as possible. That would have been modest, salutary ; that might have led to many other virtues, and gradually to all. That, I think, is what the small still voices would have told Ignatius, could he have heard them amid the loud buUyings and liturgyings ; but he couldn't, perhaps he never tried ; — and tliatj accordingly, was not what Ignatius resolved upon. In fact, Christian doctrine, backed by all the human wisdom I could ever hear of, incline me to think that Ignatius, had he been a good and brave man, should have consented, at this point, to be damned, — as was clear to him that he deserved to be. Here would have been a healing solace to his conscience ; one transcendent act of virtue which it still lay with him, the worst of sinners, to do. '' To die forever, as I have deserved ; let Eternal Justice triumph so, by means of me and my foul scandals, since otherwise it may not!" Selbstlodtinig, Annihilation of Self, justly reckoned the beginning of all virtue: here is the highest form of it, still possible to the lowest man. The voice of Nature this, to a repentant outcast sin- ner turning again towards the realms of manhood ; 384 JESUITISM. — and I understand it is the precept of all right Cliristianity too. But no, Ignatius could not. in his lowest abasement, consent to have justice done on him, not on Jiim^ ah no; — and there lay his crime and his misfortune, which has brought such penalty on him and us. The truth is, it was not of Eternal Nature and her Oracles that Ignatius inquired, poor man ; it was of Temporary Art and hers, and these sang not of self- annihilation, or Ignatius would not hear that part of their song. Not so did Ignatius read the omens. '' My pruriency being terribly forbidden on one side, let it," thought Ignatius, deeply unconscious of such a thought, " have terrible course on another. Garlic- cookery and such-like excitations are accursed to me forever ; but cannot I achieve something that shall still assert my Ego I in a highly gratifying man- ner ? " Alas, human sincerity, hard as his scourging had been, was not quite attainable by him. In his frantic just agonies, he flung himself before the shrine of Virgin Marys, Saints of the Romish Calendar, three-hatted Holy Fathers, and uncertain Thauma- turgic Entities ; praying that he might be healed by miracle, not by course of nature ; and that, for one most fqital item, his pruriency of appetite might, under new inverse forms, — continue with him. Which j)rayer, we may say, was granted. In the depths of his despair, all Nature glooming veritable reprobation on him, and Eternal Justice whispering, ^'■Accept what thou hast merited," there rose this altogether turbid semi-artificial glare of liopc upon Ignatius, " The Virgin will save me, the Virgni JESUITISM. 385 has saved me:" — Well and good, I say; then be qiiietj and let us see some temperance and modesty in j^ou. Far otherwise did Ignatius resolve : temperance and true modesty were not among the gifts of this precious individual the Virgin had been at the pains to save. Many plans Ignatius tried to make his Ego I still available on Earth, and still keep Heaven open for him. His pilgrimings and battlings^ his silent suffer- ings and wrestlings for that object, are enormous, and reach the highest pitch of the prurient-heroic. At length, after various failures and unsatisfactory half- successes, it struck him : " Has there not lately been a sort of revolt against the Virgin, and the Holy Father who takes care of her ? Certain infernal Here- siarchs in Germany and elsewhere, I am told, have risen up against the Holy Father, arguing with terri- ble plausibility that he is an Unholy Phantasm : he; — and if so, what am I and my outlooks! A new light, presumably of Hell, has risen to that effect; which new light — why cannot I vow here, and conse- crate myself, to battle against, and with my whole ^strength endeavor to extinguish ? " That was the task Ignatius fixed upon as his; and at that he has been busy, he and an immense and ever-increasing sodality of mortals, these three hundred years; and, through various fortune, they have brought it thus far. Truly to one of the most singular predicaments, the affairs of mankind ever stood in before. If the new light is of Hell, O Ignatius, right : but if of Heaven, there is not, that I know of, any equally damnable sin as thine! No ; thy late Pighood itself is trivial in comparison. Frantic mortal, wilt thou, 33 386 JESUITISM. at the bidding of any Papa, Avar against Almighty God ? Is there no 'inspiration,' then, but an ancient Jewish, Greekish, Romish one, with big revenues, loud liturgies, and red stockings ? The Pope is old ; but Eternity, thou shalt observe, is older. High- treason against all the Universe is dangerous to do. Q^uench not among us, I advise thee, the monitions of that thrice-sacred gospel, holier than all gospels, which dwells in each man direct from the Maker of him ! Frightfully will it be avenged on thee, and on all that follow thee ; to the sixth generation and farther, all men shall lie under this gigantic Upas-tres thou hast been planting ; terribly Avill the gods avenge it on thee, and on all thy Father Adam's house ! Ignatius's black militia, armed with this precious message of salvation, have now been campaigning over all the world for about three hundred years ; and openly or secretly have done a mighty work over all the world. Who can count what a work ! Where you meet a man believing in the salutary nature of falselioods, or the divine authority of things doubtful, and fancying that to serve the Good Cause he must call the Devil to his aid, there is a follower of Unsaint Ignatius : not till the last of these men has vanished from the Earth will our account with Ignatius be quite settled, and his black militia have got their mit- timus to Chaos again. They have given a new sub- stantive to modern languages. The word ' Jesuitism ' JESUITISM. 387 now, in all countries, expresses an idea for which there was in Nature no prototype hefore. Not till these late centuries had the human soul generated that abomination, or needed to name it. Truly they have achieved great things in the world ; and a gen- eral result which we may call stupendous. Not vic- tory for Ignatius and the black militia, — no, till the Universe itself become a cunningly devised Fable, and God the Maker abdicate in favor of Beelzebub, I do not see how ' victory ' can fall on that side ! But they have done such deadly execution on the general soul of man; and have wrought such havoc on the terrestrial and supernal interests of this world, as in- sure to Jesuitism a long memory in human annals. How many three-hatted Papas, and scandalous Con- secrated Phantasms, cleric and laic, convicted or not yet suspected to be Phantasms and servants of the Devil and not of God, does it still retain in existence in all corners of this afflicted world! Germany had its War of Thirty Years, among other wars, on this subject ; and had there not been elsewhere a nobler loyalty to God's Cause than was to be found in Ger- many at that date, Ignatius with his rosaries and gibbet-ropes, with his honeymouthed Fathers Lam- merlein in black serge, and heavyfisted Fathers Wal- lenstein in chain armor, must have carried it ; and that alarming Lutheran new-light would have been got ex- tinguished again. The Continent once well quenched out, it was calculated England might soon be made to follow, and then the whole world were blessed with orthodoxy. So it had been computed. But Gustavus, a man prepared to die if needful, Gustavus SS8 JESUITISM. with his Swedes appeared upon the scene ; nay short- ly Oliver Cromwell with his Puritans appeared upon it ; and the computation quite broke down. Beyond seas and within seas, the VVallensteins and Lammer- leins, the Hyacinths and Andreas Habernfelds, the Lauds and Charleses, — in fine, Ignatius and all that held of him, — had to cower into their holes again, and try it by new methods. Many were their meth- ods, their fortune various; and ever and anon, to the liope or the terror of this and the other man of weak judgment, it has seemed that victory was just about to crown Ignatius. True, too true, the execution done upon the soul of mankind has been enormous and tremendous; but victory to Ignatius there has been none, — and will and can be none. Nay at last, ever since 1789 and '93, the figure of the quarrel has much altered ; and the hope for Igna- tius (except to here and there a man of weak judg- ment) has become a flat impossibility. For Luther and Protestantism Proper having, so to speak, with- drawn from the battle-field, as entities Avhose work was done, there then appeared on it Jean Jacques and French Sansculottisni ; to Avhich all creatures have gradually joined themselves. Whereby now we have Protestantism /^proper, — a Protestantism universal and illimitable on the part of all men ; the whole world risen into anarchic mutiny, with pike^and paving-stone ; swearing by Heaven above and also by Hell beneath, by the Eternal Yea and the Eternal No, that Ignatius and Imposture shall not rule them any more, neither in soul nor in body nor in breeches- pocket any more ; but that they will go unruled JESUITISM. 389 rather, — as they hope it Avill be possible for them to do. This is Ignatius's ' destruction ' of Protestant- ism : he has destroyed it into Sanscnlcttism, such a form of all-embracing Protestantism as was never dreamt of by the human soul before. So tliat now, at last, there is hope of final death and rest to Igna- tius and his labors. Ignatius, I perceive, is now sure to die and be abolished before long; nay is already dead, and will not even galvanize much farther ; but, ..f in fine, is hourly sinking towards the Abyss, — drag- ging much along with him thither. Whole worlds along with him : such continents of things, once living and beautiful, now dead and horrible ; things once sacred, now not even commonly profane : — fearful and wonderful, to every thinking heart and seeing eye, in these days ! That is the answer, slowly enunciated, but irrevocable and indubitable, which Ignatius gets in Heaven's High Court, when he appeals there, asking, "Am I a Sanctus or not, as the Papa and his Devil's Advocate told me I was ? " The ' vivaciousness' of Jesuitism is much spoken of, as a thing creditable. And truly it is remarkable, though I thiiik in- the way of wonder even more than of admiration, what a quantity of killing it does require. To say nothing of the Cromwells and Gustavuses, and what they did, they and theirs, — it is near a century now since Pombal and Aranda, secular and not divine men, yet useful antiseptic prod- ucts of their generation, felt called, if not con- sciously by Heaven, then by Earth which is uncon- sciously a bit of Heaven, to cut down tliis scandal 33* 390 JESUITISM. from the world, and make the Earth rid of Jesuitism for one thing. What a wide-sweeping sheer they gave it, as with the sudden scythe of universal death, is well known ; and how, mown down from side to side of the world in one day, it had to lie sorrowfully slain and withering under the sun. After all which, nay after 1793 itself, does not Jesuitism still pretend to be alive ; and in this year 1850, still (by dint of steady galvanism) shows some quivering in its fingers and toes ? Vivacious, sure enough ; and I suppose tliere must be reasons for it, which it is well to note withal. But what if such vivaciousness were, in good part, like that of evil weeds ; if the ' strength ' of Jesuitism were like that of typhus-fever, not a recommendable kind of strength ! I hear much also of ' obedience,' how that and the kindred virtues are prescribed and exemplified by Jes- uitism ; the truth of which, and the merit of which, far be it from me to deny. Obedience, a virtue uni- versally forgotten in these days, will have to become universally known again. Obedience is good, and in- dispensable : but if it be obedience to what is wrong and false, — good Heavens, there is no name for such a depth of human cowardice and calamity ; spurned everlastingly by the gods. Loyalty ? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub ? Will you ' make a covenant with Death and Hell ? ' 1 will not be loyal to Beelzebub ; I will become a nomadic Chactaw rather, a barricad- ing Sansculotte, a Conciliation-Hall repealer ; any- thing and everything is venial to that. The virtues of Jesuitism, seasoned with that fatal condiment, are other than quite virtuous ! To cher- JESUITISM. 331 ish pious thoughts, and assiduously keep your eye directed to a Heaven that is not real : will that yield divine life to you, or hideous galvanic lite-in-deaih ? To cherish many quasi-human virtues, really many possibilities of virtue ; and wed them all to the prin- ciple that God can be served b}^ believing what is not true: to put out the sacred lamp of Intellect within you ; to decide on maiming yourself of that higher godlike gift, whicl\God himself has given you with a -silent but awful charge in regard to it ; to be bullied and bowowed out of your loyalty to the God of Light by big Phantasms and three-hatted Chimeras: can I call that by the name of nobleness or human courage ? — '• Could not help it," say you ? If 'a man cannot help it,' a man must allow me to say he has unfortunately given the most conspicuous proof of caitiff hood that lay within his human possibility, and he must cease to brag to me about his ' virtues,' in that sad case ' But, in fact, the character of the poor creature named Ignatius, whether it be good or bad and worst, concerns us little ; not even that of the specific Jesuit Body concerns us much. The Jesuits proper have long since got their final mittimus from England. Nor, in the seventeenth century, — with an ubiquitous alarming Toby Mathews, Andreas Habernfeld and Company ; with there a Father Hyacinth, and here a William Laud and Charles First, — was this by any means so light a business as we now fancy. But it has been got accomplished. Long now have the English People understood that Jesuits proper, in so far as they are not Nothing (which is the commonest case), are 392 JESUITISM. servants of the Prince of Darkness : by Puritan Crom- welliads on the great scale, and on the small by dili- gent hunting, confinement in the Clink Prison, and judicial tribulation, — let us say, by earnest pious thought and fight, and the labors of the valiant born to us, — this country has been tolerably cleared of Jesuits proper ; nor is there danger of their ever com- ing to a head here again. But, alas, the expulsion of the Jesuit Body avails us little, when the Jesuit Soul has so nestled itself in the life of mankind every- where. What we have to complain of is, that all men are become Jesuits ! That no man speaks the truth to you or to himself, but that every man lies, — with blasphemous audacity, and does not know that he is lying, — before God and man, in regard to almost all manner of things. This is the fell' heritage bequeathed us by Ignatius ; to this sad stage has our battle with him come. Consider it, good reader; — and yet alas, if thou be not one of a thousand, what is the use of bidding thee consider it ! The deadliest essence of the curse we now labor under is that the light of our inner eyesi-ght is gone out ; that such things are not dis- cernible by considering. ' Cant and even sincere Cant : ' O Heaven, when a man doing his sincerest is still but canting ! For this is the sad condition of the insincere man : he is doomed all his days to deal with insincerities ; to live, move, and have his being, in traditions and conventionalities. If the traditions have grown old, the conventionalities will be mostly false ; true in no sense can they be for him : never shall he behold the truth of any matter; formulas, JESUITISM. 393 theologic, economic and other, certain snperficial readings of truth, required in the market-place, these he will take with him, these he will apply dexter- ously, and with these he will have to satisfy himself. Sincerity shall not exist for him ; he shall think that he has found it, while it is yet far away. Tlie deep, awful and indeed divine quality of truth that lies in every object, and in virtue of which the object exists, — from his poor eyes this is forever hidden. Not with austere divine realities which belong to the Universe and to Eternity, but with paltry ambiguous phantasms, comfortable and uncomfortable, which belong to his own parish and to the current week or generation, shall he pass his days. There had been liars in the world ; alas, never since the Old Serpent tempted Eve, had the world been free of liars, neither will it be : but there was in this of Jesuit Ignatius an apotheosis of falsity, a kind of subtle quintessence and deadly virus of ly- ii]g, the like of which had never been seen before. Measure it, if you can : prussic-acid and chloroform are poor to it ! Men had served the Devil, and men had very imperfectly served God; but to think that God cou'.d be served more perfectly by taking the Devil into partnership, — this was a novelty of St. Ignatius. And this is now no novelty ; to such extent has the Jesuit chloroform stupefied us all. This is the universal faith and practice, for several generations past, of the class called good men in this woild. They are in general mutineers, sansculottes, angry disorderly persons, and a plass rather worthy to be called bad, who hitherto assert the contrary of 094 JESUITISM. this. '' Be careful how you believe truth," cries the good mau every where : '' Composure aud a whole skill are very valuable. Truth, — who knows? — many things are not true ; most things are uncertain- ties, very prosperous things are even open falsities that have been agreed upon. There is little certain truth going. If it isn't orthodox truth, it will play the very devil with you ! " Did the Human Species ever lie in such a soak of horrors, — sunk like steeping flax under the wide- spread fetid Hell-waters, — in all spiritual respects dead, dead; voiceless towards Heaven for centuries back ; merely sending up, in the form of mute prayer, such an odor as the angels never smelt before ! It has to lie there, till the worthless part has been rotted out ; till much has been rotted out, I do perceive ; — and perhaps the time has come when the precious lint-fibre itself is in danger ; and men, if they are not delivered, will cease to be men, or to be at all ! O Heavens, with divine Hudson on this hand, and divine Ignatius on that, and the Gorham Controversy going on, and the Irish Tenant Agitation (which will soon become a Scotch and an English ditto) just about beginning, is not the hour now nearly come ? Words fail us when we would speak of what Igna- tius has done for men. Probably the most virulent form of sin which the Old Serpent has yet rejoiced in on our poor Earth. For me it is the deadliest high treason against God our Maker which the soul of man could commit. And this then is the horrible conclusion we have arrived at, m England as in all countries j and with JESUITISM. 395 less protest against it hitherto, and not with more, in England than in other countries ? That the great body of orderly considerate men ; men affecting the name of good and pious, and who, in fact, excluding certain silent exceptionary individuals one to the million, such as the Almighty Beneficence never quite withholds, are accounted our best men, — have unconsciously abnegated the sacred privilege and duty of acting or speaking the truth ; and fancy that it is not truth that is to be a-cted, but that an amalgam of truth and falsity is the safe thing. In parliament and pulpit, in book and speech, in whatever spiritual thing men have to commune of, or to do together, this is the rule they have lapsed into, this is the pass they have arrived at. We have to report that Human Speech is not true ! That it is false to a degree never wit- nessed in this world till lately. Such a subtle virus of falsity in the very essence of it, as far excels all open lying, or prior kinds of falsity ; false with con- sciousness of being sincere ! The heart of the world is corrupted to the core : a detestable devil's-poison circulates in the life-blood of mankind ; taints with abominable deadly malady all that mankind* do. Such a curse never fell on men before. For the falsity of speech rests on a far deeper falsi- ty. False speech, as is inevitable when men long practise it, falsifies all things ; the very thoughts, or fountains of speech and action, become false. Ere long, by the appointed curse of Heaven, a man's intellect ceases to be capable of distinguishing truth, when he permits himself to deal in speaking or acting what is false. Watch well the tongue, for out of it 396 JESUITISM. are the issues of life ! O, the foul leprosy that heaps itself in monstrous accumulation over Human Ijfe, and obliterates all the diviue features of it into oue hideous mountain of purulent disease, wlieu Human Life parts compauy with trutli.; and fancies, taught by Ignatius or another, that lies will be tlie salvation of it ! We of these late centuries have suffered as the Sons of Adam never did before ; hebetated, sunk under mountains of torpid leprosy ; and studying to persuade ourselves that this is health. And if we have awakened from the sleep of death into the Sorcerer's Sabbath of Anarchy, is it not the chief of blessings that we are awake at all? Thanks to Transcendent Sansculottism and the long-memora- ble French Revolution, the one veritable and tremen- dous Gospel of these bad ages, divine Gospel such as we deserved, and merciful too, though preached in thunder and terror ! Napoleon Campaignings, Sep- tember Massacres, Reigns of Terror, Auacharsis Clootz and Pontiff Robespierre, and still more beggarly tragi- calities that we have since seen, and are still to see : what frightful thing were not a little less frightful than the thing we had ? Peremptory was our neces- sity of putting Jesnitism away, of awakening to the consciousness of Jesuitism. - Horrible.' yes : how could it be other than horrible ? Like the valley of Jehosaphat, it lies round us, one nightmare wilder- ness, and wreck of dead-men's bones, this false modern world ; and no rapt Ezechiel in prophetic vision imaged to himself things sadder, more horrible and terrible, than the eyes of men, if they are awake, may now deliberately see. Many yet sleep; but the sleep JESUITISM. 897 of all, as we judge by their maundering and jargon- ing, their Gorham Controversies, street-barricadings, and uneasy tossings and somnambulisms, is not far from ending. Novahs says, ' We are near awakening when we dream that xoe are dreamiu":.'' A man's 'religion ' consists not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of effort for believ- ing. His religion, whatever it may be, is a discerned fact, and coherent system of discerned facts to him ; he stands fronting the worlds and the eternities upon it : to doubt of it is not permissible at all ! He must verify or expel his doubts, convert them into certainty of Yes or No ; or they Avill be the death of his reli- gion. — But, on the other hand, convert them into certainty of Yes and No ; or even of Yes though No, as the Ignatian method is, what will become of your religion ! Let us glance a little at this strange aspect of our affairs. What a man's or nation's available religion at any time is, may sometimes, especially if he abound in Bishops, Gorham Controversies, and richly endowed Churches and Church-practices, be difficult to say. For a Nation which, under very peculiar circumstances, closed its Bible about two hiuidred years ago, hanged the dead body of its CromwclL and ar.^of'ted one Cha;les Second for Defender of its F'aifh S(^-ca!k:d ; 398 JESUITISM. for such a Nation, which has closed its Bible, and decided that tlie sufficient and much handier practice would be to kiss the outside of said Bible, and in all senses swear zealously by the same without opening it again. — the question what its 'religion' is, may naturally be involved in obscurities ! Such drama- turgic fugle-worship going on everywhere, and kissing of the closed Bible, what real worship, religion^ or recognition of a Divine Necessity in Nature and Life, there may be — Or, in fact, is there any left at all ? Very little, I should say. The religion of a man in these strange circum- stances, what living conviction he has about his Destiny in this Universe, falls into a most strange condition ; — and, in truth, I have observed, is apt to take refuge in the stomach mainly. The man goes through his prescribed fugle-motions at church and elsewhere, keeping his conscience and sense of decency at ease thereby ; and in some empty part of his brain, if he have fancy left, or brain other than a beaver's, there goes on occasionally some dance of dreamy hypotheses, sentimental echoes, shadows, and other inane make-believes, — which I think are quite the contrary of a possession to him ; leading to no clear Faith, or divine life-and-death Certainty of any kind ; but to a torpid species of deliriuin somnians and delirium, stertens rather. In his head or in his heart, this man has of available religion, none. But descend into his stomach, purse and the adjacent regions, you then do awaken, even in the very last extremity, a set of divine beliefs, were it only belief in the multii li at ion-table, and certain coarser gqtward JESUITISM. 399 forms of 7iieum and tinuji. He believes in the inal- ienable nature of purchased beef, in the duty of the British citizen to fight for himself when injured, and other similar faiths: — an actual 'religion' of its sort, or revelation of what the Almighty Maker means with him in this Earth, and has irrefragably, as by direct inspiration, charged him to do. This is the man's religion ; this poor scantling of ' divine con- victions ' which you find lying, mostly inarticulate, in deep sleep at the bottom of his stomach, and have such difficulty in raising into any kind of elocution or conscious wakefulness. Alas, so much of him, his soul almost wholly, is not only asleep there, but gone drowned and dead. The" ' religion ' you awaken in him is often of a very singular quality ; enough to make the observer pause in silence. Such a religion, issuing practically in Hudson Statues, and, alas, also in Distressed Needle- women, Cannibal Connaughts, and 'remedial meas- ures suited to the occasion,' was never seen among Adam's Posterity before. But it is this modern man's religion ; all the religion you will get of him. And if you can winnow out the fugle-motions, fantasies, sentimentalisms, make-believes, and other multitudi- nous chaff, so that his religion stands before you in its net condition, you may contemplate it with scien- tific astonishment, with innumerable reflections, and may perhaps draw wise inferences from it. A singular piece of scribble, in Sauerteig's band, bearing marks of haste and almost of rage (for the words, abbreviated to the bone, tumble about as if in battle on the paper), occurs to me at this moment, 400 JESUITISM. entitled Schwein^sche Weltansicht ; and I will try to decipher and translate it. i Pig Philosophy. 'If the inestimable talent of Literatnre should, in these swift days of progress, be extended to the brute creation, having fairly taken in all the human, so that swine and oxen could communicate to us on paper what they thought of the Universe, there might cu- rious results, not uninstructive to some of us, ensue. Supposing swine (I mean four-footed swine), of sen- sibility and superior logical parts, had attained such culture ; and could, after survey and reflection, jot down for us their notion of the Universe, and of their interests and duties there, — might it not well interest a discerning public, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a stimulus to the languishing book-trade ? The votes of all creatures, it is understood at present, ought to be had ; that you may " legislate " for them with better insight. '^ How can you govern a thing," say many, ''without first asking its vote?" Unless, indeed, you already chance to know its vote, — and even something more, namely, what you are to think of its vote : what it wants by its vote ; and, still more important, what Nature wants, — which latter, at the end of the account, is the only thing that will be got ! Pig Propositions, in a rough form, are somewhat as follows : ' 1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an immeasurable Swine's trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and of other contrasts and kinds ] — es- JESUITISM. 491 pecially consisting of attainable and unattainable, the latter in nnmensely greater quantities for most pigs. '2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pjg's-wash ; moral good, attainability of ditto. ' 3. " What is Paradise, or the State of Innocence ? '' Paradise, called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to Pigs of weak judg- ment) unlimited attainability of Pig's-wash ; perfect fulfilment of one's wishes, so that the Pig's imagina- tion could not outrun reality : a fable and an impos- sibility, as Pigs of sense now sec. '4. " Define the Whole Duty of Pigs." It is the mission of universal Pighood, and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to diminish the quantity of unattain- able and increase that of attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be directed thither and thither only ; Pig Science, Pig Enthusiasm and De- votion have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs. ' 5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of universal recog- nition of the excellence of Pig's-wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough is in order, and who have had enough : Hrumph ! ' 6. The Pig knows the weather ; he ought to look out what kind of weather it will be. ' 7. " Who made the Pig ? " Unknown ; — per- haps the Pork-butcher ? '8. "Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom ? " Pigs of observation have discerned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called justice. Un- deniably at least there is a sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge &c., which, if one Pig 34* 402 JESUITISM. provoke another, comes out in a more or less destruc- tive manner : hence laws are necessary, amazing quan- tities of laws. For quarrelling is attended with loss of blood, of life, at any rate with frightful eiTnsion of the general stock of Hog's-wash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of the universal Swine's-trough : wherefore let justice be observed, that so quarrelling be avoided. '9. "What is justice?" Your own share of the general Swine's-trough, not any portion of my share. ' 10. '^ But \vhat is ' my ' share ? " Ah ! there in fact lies the grand difficulty ; upon which Pig science, meditating this long wiiile, can settle absolutely nothing. My share — hrumph ! — my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive to get without being hanged or sent to the hulks. For there are gibbets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which Lawyers have prescribed. '11. " Who are Lawyers ? " Servants of God, ap- pointed revealers of the oracles of God, who read oiF to us from day to day what is the eternal Command- ment of God in reference to the mutual claims of his creatures in this w^orld. ' 12. " Where do they find that written ? " In Coke upon Lyttleton. ' 13. " Who made Coke ? " Unknown : the maker of Coke's wig is discoverable. — " What became of Coke ? " Died. — " And then ? " Went to the un- dertaker; w^ent to the' But we must pull up: Sauerteig's fierce humor, confounding ever farther in his haste the fourfooted with the twofooted animal, rushes into wilder and wilder forms of satirical torch- JESUITISM. 403 dancing, and threatens to end in a universal Rape of the Wigs, wliich in a person of his character looks ominous and dangerous. Here, for example, is his fifty-first 'Proposition,' as he calls it: '51. " What are Bishops ? " Overseers of souls. — '' What is a soul ? " The thing tliat keeps the body- alive. — "How do they oversee that?" They tie on a kind of aprons, publish charges; I believe they j>ray dreadfully; macerate themselves nearly dead with continual grief that they cannot in the least oversee it. — "And are much honored?" By the wise very much. ' 52. " Define the Church." I had rather not. -^ "Do you believe in a Future state? " Yes, surely. — " What is it ? " Heaven, so-called. — " To every- body?" I understand so; hope so! — "What is it thought to be?" Hrumph! — "No Hell, then, at all?"_Hrumph!' The Fine Arts are by some thought to be a kind of religion ; the chief religion this poor Europe is to have in time coming: and undoubtedly it is in Lit- erature, Poetry, and the other kindred Arts, where at least a certain manliness of temper, and liberty to fol- low truth, prevails or might prevail, that the world's chosen souls do now chiefly take refuge, and attempt what ' Worship of the Beautiful ' may still be possi- ble for them. The Poet in the Fine Arts, especially the Poet in Speech, what Fichte calls the ' Scholar ' or the ' Literary Man,' is defined by Fichte as the 4C4 JESUITIS3T. 'Priest' of these Modern Epochs, — all tlic Priest they have. And indeed Nature herself will teach us that tlie man born with what wo call ' genius,' which will mean, born with better and larger understanding than others ; the man in whom ' the inspiration of the Almighty,' given to all men, has a higher poten- tiality ; — that ho, and properly he only, is the per- petual Priest of Men ; ordained to the office by God himself, whether men can be so lucky as to get him ordained to it or not : nay he does the office, too, after a sort, in this and in all epochs. Ever must the Fine xirts be if not religion, yet indissolubly united to it, dependent on it, vitally blended with it as body is with soul. Why should I say, Ignatius Loyola ruined our Fine Arts? Ignatius thought not of the Fine Arts ; nor is the guilt all his. Ignatius, intent on the heart of the matter, did but consecrate in the name of Heaven, and religiously welcome as life in God, the universal death in the Devil which of itself was preparing to come, — on the Fine Arts as on all things. The Fine Arts are not what I most regret in the catas- trophe so frightfully accelerated and consummated by him ! If men's practical faith have become a Pig Philosophy, and their divine worship have become a Mumbojumboism, soliciting in dumb agony either change to the very heart or else extinction and aboli- tion, it matters little what their fine or other arts may be. All arts, industries and pursuits they have, are tainted to the heart with foul poison ; carry not in them the inspiration of God, but ( rightful to think of!) that of the Devil calling and thinking himself JESUITISM. 405 God ; and are smitten with a curse forevermore. What judgment the Academy of Cognoscenti may pronounce on them, is unimportant to me ; what splendor of upholstery and French cookery, and tem- porary bullion at the Bank, may be realized from them, is important to M-Crowdy, not to me. Such bullion, I perceive well, can but be tempo- rary ; — and if it were to be eternal, would bulHon reconcile me to them ? No, M-Crowdy, never. Bul- lion, temporary bullion itself, awakens the hallelujah of flunkeys ; but even eternal bullion ought to make small impression upon men. To men I count it a human blessedness, and stern benignity of Heaven, that when their course is false and ignoble, their bul- lion begins to leave them ; that ultimate bankruptcy, and flat universal ruin, published in the gazette, and palpable even to flunkeys, follows step by step, at a longer or shorter interval, all solecisms under this sun. Certain as shadow follows substance ; it is the oldest law of Fate : — and one good day, open ruin, bank- ruptcy and foul destruction, does overtake them all. Let us bless God for it. Were it otherwise, what ei]d could there be of solecisms? The temporary para- dise of quacks and flunkeys, were now an eternal paradise ; how could the noble soul find harbor or patience in this world at all ? This world were the inheritance of the ignoble ; — a very Bedlam, as some sceptics have fancied it ; made by malignant gods in their sport. But as to Jesuitism in the Fine Arts, and how its unsuspected thrice-unblessed presence here too smites the genius of mankind with paralysis, there were 406 JESUITISM. much to be said. Sorrowful reflections lie in that, far beyond what a discerning public fancies in these days ; reflections which cannot be entered upon, which can hardly be indicated afar ofl", at present. Here too, as elsewhere, the consummate flower of Consecrated Unveracity reigns supreme ; and here as elsewhere peaceably presides over an enormous Life- in- Death ! " May the Devil fly away with the Fine Arts ! " exclaimed confidentially once, m my hearing, one of our most distinguished public men ; a sentiment that ot^ten recurs to me. I perceive too well how true it is, in our case. A public man, intent on any real busi- ness, does, I suppose, find the Fine Arts rather imagi- nary. The Fine Arts, wherever they turn up as business, whatever Committee sit upon them, are sure to be the parent of much empty talk, laborious hypoc- risy, dilettantism, futility ; involving huge trouble and expense and babble, which end in no result, if not in worse than none. The practical man, in his mo- ments of sincerity, feels them to be a pretensions nothingness ; a confused superfluity and nuisance, purchased with cost, — what he in brief language denominates a bore. It is truly so, in these degraded days : — and the Fine Arts, among other fine interests of ours, are really called to recognize it, and see what they will do in it. For they are become the Throne of Hypocrisy, I think the highest of her many thrones, these said Arts; which is very sad to consider! No- where, not even on a gala-day in the Pope's Church of St. Peter, is there such an explosion of intolerable JESXTITISIil. 407 hypocrisy, on the part of poor mankind, as when you admit them into their Royal Picture-gallery, Glypto- thek, Museum, or other divine Temjjle of the Fine Arts. Hypocrisy doubly intolerable ; because it is not here, as in St. Peter's and some other Churches, an obliged hypocrisy but a voluntary one. Nothing but your own vanity prompts you here to pretend worshipping ; you are not bound to worship, and twaddle pretended raptures, criticisms and poetic rec- ognitions, unless you like it; — and you do not the least know what a damnable practice it is, or you wouldn't ! I make a rule, these many years back, to speak almost nothing, and encourage no speech in Picture-galleries ; to avoid company, even that of familiar friends, in such situations ; and perambulate the place in silence. You can thus worship or not worship, precisely as the gods bid you ; and are at least under no obligation to do hypocrisies, if you cannot conveniently worship. The fact is, though men are not in the least aware of it, the Fine Arts, divorced entirely from Truth this long while, and wedded almost professedly to False- hood, Fiction and such-like, are got into what we must call an insane condition : they walk abroad without keepers, nobody suspecting their sad state, and do fan- tastic tricks equal to any in Bedlam, — especially when admitted to work ' regardless of expense,' as we some- times see them ! What earnest soul passes that new St. Stephen's, and its wilderness of stone pepperboxes with their tin flags atop, worth two millions I am told, without mentally exclaiming Apage, and cutting some pious cross in the air ! Tf that be ' ideal beauty,' ex- 4C8 JESUITISM. cept for siigarworkj and the more elaborate kinds of gingerbread, what is real ngllness? To say merely (with an architectonic trumpet-blast that cost two millions,) "Good Christians, you observe well I am regardless of expense, and also of veracity, in every form?" Too truly these poor Fine Arts have fallen mad ! The Fine Arts once divorcing themselves from truth, are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die, and get flown away with by the Devil, which latter is only the second-worst result for us. Truth, fact, is the life of all things ; falsity, ' fiction ' or whatever it may call itself, is certain to be death, and is already insan- ity, to whatever thing takes up with it. Fiction, even to the Fine Arts, is not a quite permissible thing. Sparingly permissible, within iron limits ; or if you will reckon strictly, not permissible at all ! The Fine Arts too, like the coarse and every art of Man's god-given Faculty, are to understand that they are sent hither not to fib and dance, but to speak and work ; and, on the whole, that God Almighty's Fads, such as given us, are the one pabulum which will yield them any nour- ishment in this world. O Heavens, had they always well remembered that, what a world were it now ! This seems strange doctrine : but it is to me, this long Avhile, too sorrowfully certain ; and I invite all my artist friends, of the painting, sculpturing, speaking, writing, especially of the singing and rhyming depart- ment, to meditate upon it, till, with amazement, re- moi'se, and determination to amend, they get to see what lies in it ! Homer's Iliad, if you examine, is no Fiction but a Ballad History ; the heart of it burning JESUITISM. 409 witlj enthusiastic ill-informed belief. Ic ' sings ' itself, because its rude heart, rapt into transcendency of zeal and admiration, is too full for speaking. The 'valor of Tydides,' 'wrath of the divine Achilles:' in old Greece, in Phthiotis and ^tolia, to earnest souls that could believe them, these things were likely to be in- teresting ! Human speech was once wholly true ; as transcendent human speech still is. The Hebrew Bible, is it not, before all things, true, as no other Book ever was or will be ? All great Poems, all great Books, if you search the first foundation of their greatness, have been veridical, the truest they could get to be. Never will there be a great Poem more that is not veridical, that does not ground itself on the Interpret- ing of Fact ; to the rigorous exclusion of all falsity, fiction, idle dross of every kind : never can a Poem truly interest human souls, except by, in the first place, takiug with it the belief o^ said souls. Their belief; tliat is the whole basis, essence, and practical ontcome, of human souls : leave that behind you, as ' Poets ' everywhere have for a long time done, what is there left the Poets and you! The early Nations of the world, all Nations so long as they continued simple and in earnest, knew with- out teaching that their History was an Epic and Bible, the clouded struggling image of a God's Pres- ence, the action of heroes and god-inspired men. The noble intellect that could disinthrall such divine image, and present it to them clear, unclouded, in visible coherency comprehensible to human thought, was felt to bo a Vatcs and the chief of intellects 85 410 JESUITISM. No need to bid him sing it, make a Poem of it ; Nature herself compelled him ; except in Song or in Psalm, such an insight by human eyes into the divine was not utterable. Tiiese are the Bibles of Nations; to each its Beheved History is its Bible. Not in Judea alone, or Hellas and Latium alone ; but in all lauds and all times. Nor, deeply as the fact is now forgotten, has it essentially in the smallest degree ceased to be the fact, nor will it cease. With every Nation it is so, and with every man ; — for every Nation, I suppose, was made by God, and every man too ? Only there are some Nations, like some men, who know it; and some Avho do not. The great Nations are they that have known it well ; the small and cori- teniptible, both of men and Nations, are they that have either never known it, or soon forgotten it and never laid jt to heart. Of these comes nothing. The measure of a Nation's greatness, of its worth under this sky to God and to men, is not the quantity of cotton it can spin, the quantity of bullion it has released ; but the quantity of heroisms it has achieved, ^of noble pieties and valiant wisdoms that were in it, — that still are in it. Beyond doubt the Almighty Maker made this Eng- land too; and has been and forever is miraculously present here. The more is the pity for us if our eyes are grown owlish, and cain:iot see this fact of facts when it is before us ! Once it w^as known that the Highest did of a surety dwell in this Nation, divinely avenging, and divinely saving and rewarding ; lead- ing, by steep and flaming paths, by heroisms, pieties and noble acts and thoughts, this Nation heavenward, JESUITISM. 411: if i?" would and dared. Known or not, this (or else the terrible inverse of this) is forevermore the fact ! The History of England too. had the Fine or other Arts taught us to read it right, is the record of the Divine Appearances among ns ; of the brightnesses out of Heaven that have irradiated our terrestrial struggle ; and spaiuied our wild deluges, and weltering seas of trouble, as with celestial rainbows, and symbols of eternal covenants. It is the Bible of the Nation ; what part of it they have laid to heart, and do prac- tically know for truth, is the available Bible they have . Ask yourselves. What are the eternal covenants which you can believe, and dare not for your life's sake but go and observe ? These are your Bible, your God's Word such as it may be : these you will continually struggle to obey; other thjpa these, not continually, or authentically at all. Did the Maker of this Universe reveal himself, to your believing Intel- lect, in Scrip mainly, in Cotton Trades, and profita- ble indnstries and gamblings ? Here too you will see 'miracles:' tubular bridges, gutta-percha tele- graphs ; not to speak of sudden Hudson cornucopias, scrip manna-showers, and pillar-of-cloud for all the flnnkeys, — miracles after a sort. Your Bible will be a Political Economy; your psalmist and evangelist will be M'Crowdy ; your practical worship the insa- tiable desire, and continual sacred effort, to make money. Bible, of one or the other sort, bible, evan- gelist, and worship you infallibly will have: — and some are God-worships, fruitful in human heroisms, in blessed arts, and deeds long-memorable, shining 412 JESUITISM. with a sacred splendor of the empyrean across all earthly darknesses and contradictions : and some again are, to a terrible extent, Devil-worships, frnitfnl in temporary bnllion, in upholstery, gluttony and universal varnish and gold-leaf; and issuing, alas, at length in street-barricades, and a confused return of them to the Devil whose they are! — My friend, I have to speak in crude language, the wretched times being dumb and deaf: and if thou find no truth under this but the phantom of an extinct Hebrew one, I at present cannot help it. Hengst Invasions, Norman Conquests, Battles of Brunanburg, Battles of Evesham, Towton ; Plantage- nets, Wars of Roses, Wars of Roundheads : does the fool in his heart believe all this was a Donnybrook Bedlam, originating nowhere, proceeding nowhither? His beautifully cultivated intellect has given him such interpretation, and no better, of the Universe we live in? He discerns it to be an enormous sooty Weav- ing shop, and turbid Manufactory of eatables and drinkables and wearables ; sparingly supplied with provender, by the industrious individuals, and much infested by the mad and idle. And he can consent to live here ; he does not continually think of suicide as a remedy ? The unhapp)^ mortal : if a soul ever awaken in him again, his first thought will be of prussic-acid, I should say ! — All history, whether M"Crowdy and his Fine Arts know the fact or not, is an inarticulate Bible ; and in a dim intricate manner reveals the Divine Appearances in this lower world. For God did make this world, and does forever govern it ; the loud-roaring Loom JESUITISM. 413 of Time, with all its French revohitioiis, Jewish revelations, 'weaves the vesture thou seest Him by.' There is no Biography of a man, much less any His- tory, or Biography of a Nation, but wraps in it a message out of Heaven, addressed to the hearing ear or to the not hearing. What this Universe is, what the Laws of God are, the Life of every man will a little teach it you ; the Life of All Men and of All Things, only this could wholly teach it you, — and you are to be open to learn. Who are they, gifted from above, that will convert voluminous Dryasdust into an Epic and even a Bible ?' Who will smelt, in the all-victorious fire of his souL these scandalous bewildering rubbish-mountains of sleepy Dryasdust, till they give up the golden ingot that lies imprisoned in them ? The veritable ' reve- lation,' this, of the ways of God to England ; how the Almighty Power, and his mysterious Providences, dealt heretofore with England ; more and more what the Almighty's judgments with us, his chastisements and his beneficences, were; what the Supreme Will, since ushering tliis English People on the stage of things, has guided them to do and to become. Fine Arts. Literatures, Poetries ? If they are Human Arts at all, where have they been woolgathering, these centuries long ; — wandering literally like creatures fallen mad ! It awakens graver thoughts than were in Marlbor- ough, that saying of his, That he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shakspeare. In Shakspeare's grand intelligence the" History of England, cursory as was his study of it, does model 4 14 JESUITISM. itself, for the first time, into something of rhythmic and poetic ; there are scattered traits and tones of a National Epos in those Historical Plays of his. In Shakspeare, more than in another, lay that high vates talent of interpreting confused human Actualities, and unfolding what divine melodious Ideals, or Thoughts of the Supreme, were embodied in them: he, more than any other, might have done somewhat towards making History a Bible. But, alas, it was not in the Temple of the Nations, with all intelli- gences ministering to him and cooperating with him, that his workshop was laid ; it was in the Bankside Playhouse that Shakspeare was set to work, and the sovereign populace had ware for their sixpence from him there ! — After all, I do not blame the poor Fine Arts for taking into fiction, and into all the deeper kinds of falsity which grow from that. Ignatius, and a world too ready to follow him., had discovered the divine virtues of fiction in far higher provinces ; the road to fiction lay w^ide-open for all things ! But Nature's eternal voice, inaudible at present or faintly audible, proclaims the contrary nevertheless ; and will make it known again one day. Fiction, I think, or idle falsity of any kind, was never tolerable, except in a world which did itself abound in practical lies and solemn shams ; and which had gradually impressed on its inhabitants the inane form of character tolerant of that kind of ware. A serious soul, can it wish, even in hours of relaxation, that you should fiddle empty nonsense to it ? A serious soul would desire jESUiTTsr.1. 415 to be entertained, either with absolute silence, or with what was truth, and had fruit in it, and was made by the Maker of us all. With the idle soul I can fancy it far otherwise ; but only with the idle. Given an idle potentate, monster of opulence, glut- tonous bloated Nawaub, of black color or of white, — naturally he will have prating story-tellers to amuse his half-sleepy hours of rumination ; if from his deep gross stomach, sinking overloaded as if towards its last torpor, they can elicit any transient glow of inter- est, tragic or comic, especially any wrinkle of momen- tary laughter, however idle, great shall be their re- ward. Wits, story-tellers, ballad-singers, especially dancing-girls who understand their trade, are in much request with such gluttonous half-sleeping, black or white Monster of Opulence. A bevy of supple dan- cing-girls who, with the due mixture (mixture settled by custom), and with not more than the due mixture, of lascivious fire, will represent to him, brandishing their daggers, and rhythmically chanting and postur- ing, the Loves of Vishnu, Loves of Adonis, Death of Psyche, Barber of Seville, or whatever nonsense there may be, according to time or country : these are the kind of artists fit for such unfortunate stuffed stupefied Nawaub, in his hours of rumination ; upon these his hot heavy-laden eye may rest without abhorrence j if with perceptible momentary satisfaction emerging from his bottomless ennui, — then victory and gold- purses to the artist ; be such artist crowned with lau- rel or with parsley, and declared divine in presence of all men. Luxurious Europe, in its reading publics, dilet- 416 JESUITISM. tanti, cognoscenti and other publics, is wholly one big ugly Nawaub of that kind ; who has converted all the Fine Arts into after-dinner amnsements ; slave ad- juncts to his cookeries, upholsteries, tailories, and other palpably Coarse Arts. The brutish monster has turned all the Nine IMuses, who by birth are sacred Priestesses of Heaven, into scandalous Bayaderes ; and they dance with snpple motions, to enlighten the vile darkness of his ennni for him. Too truly mad^ these poor Fine Arts ! The Coarse Arts too, if he had not an authentic stomach and skin, which always bring him a little right again in those departments, would go mad. How all things hang together ! Universal Jesuitism having once lodged itself in the heart, you will see it in the very finger-nails by and by. Calculate how far it is from Sophocles and ^schylus to Knowles and Scribe ; how Homer has gradually changed into Sir Harris Nicholas ; or what roads the human spe- cies must have travelled before a Psalm of David could become an Opera at the Haijmarket, and men, with their divine gift of Music, instead of solemnly celebrating the highest fact, or 'singing to the praise of God,' consented to celebrate the lowest nonsense, and sing to the praise of Jenny Lind and the Gazza Ladra, — perhaps the step from Oliver Cromwell to Lord John Russell will not seem so unconscionable ! I find it within, and not without, the order of Na- ture ; and that all things, like all men, are blood-rela. tions to one another. This accursed nightmare, which we name Jesuit- ism, will have to vanish; our conifort is, that life JESUITISM. 417 'tself is not much longer possible otherwise. But, I say, have you computed what a distance forwards it may be towards some iieic Psalm of David done with our new appliances, and much improved wind-instru- ments, grammatical and other ? That is the distance of the new Golden Age, my friend ; not less than that, I lament to say ! And the centuries that inter- vene are a foul agonistic welter through the Stygian seas of mud : a long Scavenger Age, inevitable where the Mother of Abominations has long dwelt ! It is to be hoped one is not blind withal to the celebrated virtues that are in Jesuitism ; to its mis- sionary zeal, its contempt of danger, its scientific, heroic and other prowesses, of which there is such celebrating. I do not doubt that there are virtues in it; that we and it, along with this immeasurable sea of miseries which it has brought upon us, shall ulti- mately get the benefit of its virtues too. Peruvian bark, of use in human agues ; tidings from the fabu- lous East by D'Herbelot, Du Halde, and others ; ex- amples of what human energy and faculty are equal to, even under the inspiration of Ignatius : nothing of this small residue of pearls from such a continent of putrid shellfish, shall be lost to the world. Nay, I see, across this black deluge of Consecrated Falsity, the world ripening towards glorious new develop- ments, unimagined hitherto, — of which this abomi- nable mud-deluge itself, threatening to submerge us all, was the inevitable precursor, and the means de- creed by the Eternal. If it please Heaven, we shall 418 JESUITISM, all yet make our Exodus from Houndsditch, and bid the sordid continents, of once rich apparel now grown poisonons Ou'-Clo\ a mild farewell! Exodns into wider horizons, into God's daylight once more ; where eternal skies, measuring 77io?'e than three ells, shall again overarch us ; and men, immeasurably richer for having dwelt among the Hebrews, shall pursue their Jnunan pilgrimage, St. Ignatius and much other saintship, and superstitious terror and lumber, lying safe behind us, like the nightmares of a sleep that is past ! — I said the virtue of obedience was not to be found except among the Jesuits : how, in fact, among the .4n^2- Jesuits, still in a revolutionary posture in this world, can you expect it ? Sansculottism is a rebel ; has its birth, and being, in open mutiny; and cannot give you examples of obedience. It is so with several other virtues and cardinal virtues ; they seem to have vanished from the world ; — and I often say to myself, Jesuitism and other Superstitious Scandals cannot go, till we have read and appropriated from them the tradition of these lost noblenesses, and once more under the new conditions made them ours. Jesuitism, the Papa with his three hats, and whole continents of chimerical lumber will then go ; their errand being wholly done. We cannot make our Exodus from Houndsditch till we have got our own along with us! The Jew old-clothes having now grown fairly pesti- lential, a poisonous encumbrance in the path of men, burn them np with revolutionary fire, as you like and can: even so, — but you shall not quit the place till you have gathered from their ashes what of gold or JESUITISM. 419 Other enduring metal was sewed upon them, or woven in the tissue of them. That is tlie appointed course of human tilings. Here are two excerpts from the celebrated Gather- coal, a Yankee friend of mine ; which flash strangely a kind of torch-gleam into the hidden depths ; and indicate to ns the grave and womb of Jesuitism, and of several other things: 'Moses and the Jews did not make God^s Laws,' exclaims he ; 'no, by no means; they did not even read them in a way that has been final, or is satisfac- tory to me ! In several important respects I find said reading decidedly bad ; and will not, in anywise, think of adopting it. How dare I, think you ? — And yet, alas, if we forget to read these Law^s at all ; if we go along as if they were not there ! 'My enlightened friends of this present supreme age, what shall I say to you ? That time does rest on Eternity; that he who has no vision of Eternity will never get a true hold of Time, or its affairs. Time is so constructed ; that is the fact of the con- struction of this world. And no class of mortals who have not, — through Nazareth or otherwise, — come to get heartily acquainted with such fact, perpetually familiar with it in all the outs and ins of their exist- ence, have ever found this Universe habitable long. Alas, no; their fraternities, equalities, free-trade phi- losophies, greatest-happiness principles, soon came to a conclusion ; and the poor creatures had to go, — to the Devil, I fear ! Generations such as ours play a curious part in World-Hislory. ' They sit as Ap^s do round a fire in the woods, but 420 JESUITISM. know not how to feed it with fresh sticks. They have to quit it soon, and march — into Chaos, as I conjectnre ; into that land of which Bedlam is the Mount Zion. The world turns out not to be made of mere eatables and drinkables, of newspaper puffs, gilt carriages, conspicuous flunkeys ; no, but of some- thing otlier than these! Old Suetonius Romans, corrupt babbling Greeks of the Lower Empire, ex- amples more than one : consider them ; be taught by them, add not to the number of them. Heroism, not the apery and traditions of Heroism ; the feeling, spoken or silent, that in man's life there did lie a God- like, and that his Time-history was verily but an emblem of some Eteri^al : without this there had been no Rome either; it was this that had made old Rome, old Greece, and old India. Apes, with their wretched blinking eyes, squatted round a fire which they can- not feed with new wood ; which they say will last forever without new wood, — or, alas, which they say is going out forever : it is a sad sight ! ' Elsewhere my eccentric friend, as some call him, — whose centre, however, I think I have got into, — has this passage : 'Church, do you say? Look eighteen hundred years ago. in the stable at Bethlehem : an infant laid in a manger ! Look, thou ass. and behold it ; it is a fact, — the most undubitable of facts : thou wilt there- by learn innumerable things. Jesus of Nazareth and the life he led, and the death he died, does it teach thee nothing ? Through this, as through a miracu- lous window, the heaven of Martyr Heroism, the *' divine depths of Sorrow," of noble Labor, and ths JESUITISM. 421 unspeakable silent expanses of Eternity, first in man's history disclose themselves. The admiration of all nobleness, divine ivorship of godlike nobleness, how universal it is in the history of man ! ' But mankind, that singular entity mankind, is like the fertilest, flnidest, most wondrous element, an element in which the strangest things crystallize themselves, and spread out in the most astounding growths. The event at Bethlehem was of the Year One ; but all years since that, eighteen hundred of them now, have been contributing'Tiew growth to it, — and see, there it stands: the Church! Touching the earth with one small point ; springing out of one small seedgrain, rising out therefrom, ever higher, ever broader, high as the Heaven itself, broad till it overshadow the whole visible Heaven and Earth, and no star can be seen but through it. From such a seedgrain so has it grown ; planted in the reverences and sacred opulences of the soul of mankind ; fed continually by all the noblenesses of some forty gener- ations of men. The world-tree of the Nations for so long ! ' Alas, if its roots are now dead, and it have lost hold of the firm earth, or clear belief of mankind, — what, great as it is, can by possibility become of it? Shaken to and fro, in Jesuitisms, Gorham Controver- sies, and the storms of inevitable Fate, it must sway hither and thither ; nod ever farther from the perpen- dicular; nod' at last too far; and, — sweeping the eternal Heavens clear of its old brown foliage and multitudinous rooks'-nests, — come to the ground with much confused crashing, and disclose the diur- 36 4:^2 JESUITISM. nal and nocturnal Upper Lights again ! The dead world-tree will have declared itself dead. It will lie there an imbroglio of torn boughs and ruined frag- ments, of bewildered splittings and wide-spread shiv- ers ; out of which the poor inhabitants must make what they can ! ' — Enough now of Gathercoal, and his torch-gleams. Simple souls still clamor occasionally for what they call 'anew religion.' My friends, you will not get this new religion of yours ; — I perceive, you already have it, have always had it ! All that is true is your 'religion,' — is it not ? Commanded by the Eternal God to be performed^ I should think, if it is true ! Do you not already, in your dim heads, know truths by the thousand ; and yet, in your dead hearts, will you perform them by the ten, by the unit ? New re- ligion ! One last word with you on this rather con- temptible subject. You say, The old ages had a noble belief about the world, and therefore were capable of a noble ac- tivity in the world. My friends, it is partly true : (your Scepticism and Jesuitism,j your ignoble no-belief, except what belief a beaver or judicious pig were capable of, is too undeniable : observe, however, that, in this your fatal misery, there is action and reaction ; and do not confound the one with the other. Put the thing in its right posture ; cart not fi^ore horse, if you would make an effort to stir from this fatal spot ! Tt is your own falsity that makes the Universe incred- ible. I affirm to you, this Universe, in all times, and in your own poor time as well, is the express imago JESUITISM. 423 and direct counterpart of the human souls, and their thoughts and activities, who dwell there. It is a true adage, * As the fool thinks, the bell clinks.' * This mad Universe,' says Novalis, ' is the waste picture of your own dream.' Be noble of mind, all Nature gives response to your heroic struggle for recognition by her; with her awful eternal voices, answers to every mind, '• Yea, I am divine ; be thou." From the cloud-whirlwind speaks a God yet, my friend, to every man who has a human soul. To the inhuman brute-soul, indeed, she answers, " Yea, I am brutal ; a big cattle-stall, rag-fair and St. Katherine's wharf: enter thou, and fat victual, if thou be faithful, shall not fail." Not because Heaven existed, did men know Good from Evil ; the ' because,' I invite you to consider, lay quite the other way. It was because men, hav- ing hearts as well as stomachs, felt there, and knew through all their being, the difference between Good and Evil, that Heaven and Hell first came to exist. That is the sequence ; that and not the contrary. If you have now no Heaven to look to ; if you now sprawl, lamed and lost, sunk to the chin in the path- less sloughs of this lower world without guidance from above, know that the fault is not Heaven's at all ; but your own ! Our poor friends ' the Apes by the Dead Sea' have now no Heaven either: they look into this Universe now, and find it tragically grown to be the Humbug they insisted on its being. Moses went his ways, and this enchantment fell upon them ! Such 'enchantments' rhadamanthine Na- ture does yet daily execute on the rebellious: he that 5* 4 JESUITISM. has eyes may still daily see them, — fearful and won- derful ever as of old. How can you believe in a Heaven, — the like of you ? What struggle in your mean existence ever pointed thitherward ? None. The first heroic soul sent down into this world, he, looking up into the sea of stars, around into the moaning forests and big oceans, into life and death, love and hate, and joy and sorrow, and the illimitable loud-thundering Loom of Time, — was struck dumb by it (as the thought of every <3arnest soul still is) ; and fell on his face, and with his heart cried for salvation in the world-whirl- pool : to him the 'open secret of this Universe ' was no longer quite a secret, but he had caught a glimpse of it, — much hidden from the like of us in these times : " Do nobly, thou shalt resemble the Maker of all this ; do ignobly, the Enemy of the Maker." This is the ' divine sense of Right and Wrong in man ; * true reading of his position in this Universe forever- more ; the indisputable God's-message still legible in every created heart, — though speedily erased and painted over, under ' articles,' and cants and empty ceremonials, in so many hearts; making the 'open secret ' a very shut one indeed ! — My friends, across these fogs of murky twaddle and philanthropism, in spite of sad decadent ' world-trees,' with their rookeries of foul creatures, — the silent stars, and all the eternal luminaries of the world, shine even now to him that has an eye. In this day as m all days, around and in every man, are voices from the gods, imperative to all, obeyed by even none, which say audibly, "Arise, thou son of Adam, JESUITISM. 425 son of Time ; make this thing more divine, and that thing, — and thyself, of all things: — and work, and sleep not ; for the Night cometh wherein no man can work ! " He that has an ear may still hear. Surely, surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical torpor, indifference to all that does not bear on Mam- mon and his interests, is not the natural state of hu- man creatures ; and is not doomed to be their final one ! Other states once were, or there had never been a Society, or any noble thing, among us at all. Under this brutal stagnancy, there lies painfully im- prisoned some tendency which could become heroic. The restless gnawing ennui which, like a dark dim ocean-flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian deeps, begirdles every human life so guided, — is it not the painful cry even of that imprisoned heroism ? Imprisoned it will never rest ; set forth at present, on these sad terms, it cannot be. You un- fortunates, what is the use of your moneybags, of your territories, funded properties, your mountains of possessions, equipments and mechanic inventions, which the flunkey pauses over, awestruck, and almost rises into epos and prophecy at sight of? No use, or less than none. Your skin is covered, and your di- gestive and other bodily apparatus is supplied ; and you have but to wish in these respects, and more is ready; and — the Devils, I think, are quizzing you. You ask for 'happiness,' "O give me happiness!" — and they hand you ever new varieties of covering for the skin, ever new kinds of supply for the diges- tive apparatus, new and ever new, worse or not a whit 36* 426 JESUITISIM. better than the old; and — and — this is your 'hap- piness?' As if you were sick children; as if you were not men, but a kind of apes ! I rather say, be thankful for your ennui ; it is yonr last mark of manhood ; this at least is a perpetual admonition, and true sermon preached to you. From the chair of verity this, whatever chairs be chairs of cantMy- Happiness is not come, not like to come ; ennui, with its great waste ocean-voice, moans^an- swer. Never, never. That ocean-voice, I tell you, is a great fact, it comes from Phlegethon and the gates of the Abyss ; its bodeful never-resting inexorable moan is the voice of primeval Fate, and of the eter- nal necessity of things. Will you shake away your nightmare and arise ; or must yau lie writhing under it, till death relieve you ? U^ifortunate creatures ! You are fed, clothed, lodged as men never were be- fore ; every day in new variety of magnificence are you equipped and attended to ; such wealth of mate- rial means as is now yours was never dreamed of by man before : — and to do any noble thing, with all this mountain of implements, is forever denied you. Only ignoble, expensive and unfruitful things can you now do ; nobleness has vanished from the sphere where you live. The way of it is lost, lost ; the pos- sibility of it has become incredible. We must try to do without it, I am told. — Well ; rejoice in your up- holsteries and cookeries then, if so be they will make you 'happy.' Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all things let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to you, be your portion instead of mine ; incur that Prophet's curse, and in JESUITISM. 427 all things in this subhmary world 'make yourselves like unto awheel.' Mount into your railways ; whirl from place to place, at ihe rate of fifty, or if you like of five hundred miles an hour : you cannot escape from that inexorable all-encircling ocean-moan of ennui. No : if you would mount to the stars, and do yacht-voyages under the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the ring of Saturn, it would still begirdle you. You cannot escape from it, you can but change your place in it, without solacement except one moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue with you, till you wisely interpret it and io it, or e\3e till the Crack of Doom swallow it and you. Adieu : Au revoir. 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