Latter-Day Pamphlets [70]
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 _mis_led, 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 Parliament are as little so. Tenpound Franchisers full of mere beer and balderdash; Honorable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to an Almack's series of evening parties, or big cockmain (battle of all the cocks) very amusing to witness and bet upon: what can or could men in that predicament ever do for you? Nay, if they were in life-and-death earnest, what could it avail you in such a case? I tell you, a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing 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 are 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, Whether, since reform of parliament and such like 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 infinite importance, 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 architecture, cannot avail to cure the house of smoke: not if _they_ vote and agitate forever, and bestir themselves to the length even of street-barricades, will the _smoke_ in the least abate: how can it? Their passion exercised in such ways, till Doomsday, will avail them nothing. Let their passion rage steadily against the existing major-domos to this effect, "_Find_ us men skilled in house-building, acquainted with the laws of atmospheric suction, and capable to cure smoke;" something might come of it! In the lucky circumstance of having one man of real intellect and courage to put at the head of the movement, much would come of it;--a New Downing Street, fit for the British Nation and its bitter necessities in this Now Era, would come; and from that, in answer to continuous sacred fidelity and valiant toil, all good whatsoever would gradually come.
Of the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy,"--if this should alarm any reader,--I can see no risk or possibility in England. Democracy is hot enough here, fierce enough; it is perennial, universal, 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! Democracy clamors, with its Newspapers, its Parliaments, and all its twenty-seven million throats, continually in this Nation forevermore. I remark, too, that, the unconscious purport of all its clamors is even this, "Find us men skilled,"--_make_ a New Downing Street, fit for the New Era!
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 understood to be very urgent there. Large needless expenditures of money, immeasurable ditto of hypocrisy and grimace; embassies, protocols,
The question therefore arises, Whether, since reform of parliament and such like 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 infinite importance, 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 architecture, cannot avail to cure the house of smoke: not if _they_ vote and agitate forever, and bestir themselves to the length even of street-barricades, will the _smoke_ in the least abate: how can it? Their passion exercised in such ways, till Doomsday, will avail them nothing. Let their passion rage steadily against the existing major-domos to this effect, "_Find_ us men skilled in house-building, acquainted with the laws of atmospheric suction, and capable to cure smoke;" something might come of it! In the lucky circumstance of having one man of real intellect and courage to put at the head of the movement, much would come of it;--a New Downing Street, fit for the British Nation and its bitter necessities in this Now Era, would come; and from that, in answer to continuous sacred fidelity and valiant toil, all good whatsoever would gradually come.
Of the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy,"--if this should alarm any reader,--I can see no risk or possibility in England. Democracy is hot enough here, fierce enough; it is perennial, universal, 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! Democracy clamors, with its Newspapers, its Parliaments, and all its twenty-seven million throats, continually in this Nation forevermore. I remark, too, that, the unconscious purport of all its clamors is even this, "Find us men skilled,"--_make_ a New Downing Street, fit for the New Era!
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 understood to be very urgent there. Large needless expenditures of money, immeasurable ditto of hypocrisy and grimace; embassies, protocols,