But,again,if these are our divinest men,then evidently there always is hope,there always is possibility of help;and ruin never is quite inevitable,till we have sifted out our actually divinest ten,and set these to try their band at governing!--That this has been achieved;that these ten men are the most Herculean souls the English population held within it,is a proposition credible to mortal.thank God;low as we are sunk in many ways,this is yet credible!Evidently the reverse of this proposition is the fact.Ten much diviner men do certainly exist.By some conceivable,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 the remedy.It is Parliaments,reformed or other,that will ever send Herculean men to Downing Street,to reform Downing Street for us;to diffuse therefrom a light of Heavenly Order,instead of the murk of Stygian Anarchy,over this sad world of ours.That function does lie in the capacities of Parliment.That is the function of a King ,--if we could get such a priceless entity,which we can just !Failing which,Statesmen,or Temporary Kings,and at the very lowest one real Statesman,to shape the dim tendencies of Parliament,and guide them wisely to the goal:he,I perceive,will be a primary condition,indispensable for any progress whatsoever.
One such,perhaps,might be attained;one such might prove discoverable among our Parliamentary populations?That one,in such an enterprise as this of Downing Street,might be invaluable!One le man,at once of natural wisdom and practical experience;one Intellect still really human,and red-tapish,owlish and pedantical,appearing there in that dim chaos,with word of command;to brandish Hercules-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 one such man effect there!
Nay one such is to be dispensed with anywhere.in the affairs of men.In every ship,I say,there must be a seeing pilot,a mere hearing one!It is evident you can never get your ship steered through the difficult straits by persons standing ashore,on this bank and that,and shouting their confused directions to you:"'Ware that Colonial Sandbank!--Starboard ,the Nigger Question!--Larboard,larboard ,the Suffrage Movement!Financial Reform,your Clothing-Colonels overboard!The Qualification 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 Government,Hr-r-r!"--And so the ship wriggles and tumbles,and,on the whole,goes as wind and current drive.ship was ever steered except to destruction in that manner.Ideliberately say so:ship of a State either.If you can 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 ,and by the nature of things can.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 patient mild-spoken wise manner,will regard all of it as what it is.And I never doubt but there is in Parliament itself,in spite of its vague palaverings which fill us with despair in these times,a dumb instinct of inarticulate sense and stubborn practical English insight and veracity,that would manfully support a Statesman who could take command with really manful ions 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 !
For it is Wisdom alone that can recognize wisdom:Folly or Imbecility never can;and that is the fatalest ban it labors under,dooming it to perpetual failure in all things.Failure which,in Downing Street and places of command is especially accursed;cursing 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 abundant,and deserves the reverse of reverence?He that himself has it!--One really human Intellect,invested with command,and charged to reform Downing Street for us,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 bring to it benefit only,and would increase such divine attraction in it,the parent of all benefit there and elsewhere!
"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 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 reverence 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 simply the method of ****** 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?