Ginx's Baby [4]
to be his Counsellor and Friend. When he finds that your legislative action exerts upon him a repressive and restraining force he will curse you as its author, because he sees not the springs you are working. Should he even be a little more advanced in knowledge than our friend Ginx, and learn that he helps to elect the Parliament to make laws on behalf of himself and his fellow-citizens, he will scarce trust the assembly which is supposed to represent him. Will he, like a good citizen and a politic, accept with dignity and self-control the decision of a majority against his prejudices: or will he not regard the whole Wittenagemote with suspicion, contempt, or even hatred? See him rush madly to Trafalgar Square meetings, Hyde Park demonstrations, perhaps to Lord George Gordon Riots, as if there were no less perilous means of publishing his opinions! There wily men may lead his unconscious intellect, and stir his passions, and direct his forces against his own--and his children's good. Did it ever occur to you, or any of you, how many voters cannot read, and how many more, though they can read, are unable to apprehend reasons of statesmanship?--that even newspapers cannot inform them, since they have not the elementary knowledge needed for the comprehension of those things which are discussed in them; nay, that for want of understanding the same they may terribly distort political aims and consequences? Might it not be worth while for you, gentlemen--may it not be your duty to devise ways and means for conveying such elementary instruction by good street-preachers on politics and economy, or even political bible- women or colporteurs, and so to make clear to the understanding of every voter what are the reasons and aims of every act of Legislation, Home Administration, and Foreign Policy? If you do not find out some way to do this he may turn round upon you--I hope he may-- and insist on annually-elected parliaments, and thus oblige ambitious state-mongers, in the rivalry of place, to come to him and declare more often their wishes and objects. Other attractions may be found in that solution: such as the untying of some knots of electoral difficulty, and removing incitements to corruption. Ten thousand pounds for one year's power were a high price even to a contractor. Think then whether at any cost some general political education must not be attempted, since there is a spirit breathing on the waters, and how it shall convulse them is no indifferent matter to you or to me. Everywhere around us are unhewn rocks stirred with a strange motion. Leave these chaotic fragments of humanity to be hewn into rough shape by coarse artists seeking only a petty profit, unhandy, immeasurably impudent; or dress them by your teaching--teaching which is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient function of Government, which ought to be the most lofty ambition of statesmanship--to be civic corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace. V.--Reasons and Resolves. Ginx has been waiting through three chapters to explain his truculence upon the birth of his twelfth child. Much explanation is not necessary. When he looked round his nest and saw the many open mouths about him, he might well be appalled to have another added to them. His children were not chameleons, yet they were already forced to be content with a proportion of air for their food. And even the air was bad. They were pallid and pinched. How they were clad will ever be a mystery, save to the poor woman who strung the limp rags together and Him who watched the noble patience and sacrifice of a daily heroism. Of her own unsatisfied cravings, and the dense motherly horrors that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, "Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill them." Believing that there was a God, and that He must be