This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect coolness.And yet,I say,what a strange feeling,to find himself Chief Gover 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 dumb longings:it is I?William Conqueror's big gifts,and Edward's and Elizabeth's;Oliver's lightning soul,le as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord:these are mine,Ibegin to perceive,--to a certain extent.These heroisms have I,--though rather shy of exhibiting them.These;and something withal of the huge beaver-faculty of our Arkwrights,Brindleys;touches too of the phoenix-melodies 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,raised by solemn acclamation upon the bucklers of the English People,and saluted with universal 'God save THEE!'--has the ho to annce himself.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 addressing you.The best-combined sample of whatsoever divine qualities are in this big People,the consummate flower of all that they have done and been,the ultimate product of the Destinies,and English man of men,arrived at last in the fulness of time,is--who think you?Ye worlds,the Ithuriel javelin by which,with all these heroisms and accumulated energies old and new,the English People means to smite and pierce,is this poor tailor's-bodkin,hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole,who has the ho to"--Good Heavens,if it were 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 reflection!This,then,is the length we have brought it to,with our constitutioning,and ballot-boxing,and incessant talk and effort in every kind for so many centuries back;this?The golden flower of our grand alchemical projection,which has set the world in astonishment so long,and been the envy of surrounding nations,is--what we here see.To be governed by his Lordship,and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by this respectable degree of human faculty.With our utmost soul's travail we could discover,by the sublimest methods eulogized by all the world,abler Englishman than this?
Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime methods,and ask ourselves very seriously,whether,withstanding 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 conclusions whatsoever centre there,and likewise all manner of issues flow infallibly therefrom."Ask well,who is your Chief Gover,"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 le man,has a chance to k the leness of men;he who is ,has e.And as for the poor Public,--alas,is the kind of 'man'you set upon it the liveliest symbol of its and your veracity and victory and blessedness,or unveracity and misery and cursedness;the general summation and practical outcome of all else whatsoever in the Public and in you?"Time was when an incompetent Gover could 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 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 spectacles,steering by the ear mainly?And we have changed all that;government is the best;and a tailor's foreman,who gives trouble,is preferable to any other for governing?My friends,such truly is the current idea;but you dreadfully mistake yourselves,and the fact is such.The fact,beginning to disclose itself again in distressed Needlewomen,famishing Connaughts,revolting Colonies,and a general rapid advance towards Social Ruin,remains 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 bethink 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;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 forevermore remember it;and a hundred British Constitutions 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 lenesses;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.Afact long prepared beforehand;which,if it is a peaceably received one,must have been acquiesced in,judged to be "best,"by the poor mousing owls,intent only to have a large balance at their banker's and keep a whole skin.
Such sordid populations,which were long blind to Heaven's light,are getting themselves burnt up rapidly,in these days,by street-insurrection and Hell-fire;--as is indeed inevitable,my esteemed M'Croudy!Light,accept the blessed light,if you will have it when Heaven vouchsafes.You refuse?You prefer Delolme on the British Constitution,the Gospel according to M'Croudy,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 opulent owlery is very "happy,"and well-off at its banker's;--and furthermore,by due sequence,infallible as the foundations of the Universe and Nature's oldest law,the light returns on you,condensed,this time,into lightning ,which there is any skin whatever too thick for taking in!