Reader,did you ever hear of "Constituted Anarchy"?Anarchy;the choking,sweltering,deadly and killing rule of rule;the consecration of cupidity,and braying folly,and dim stupidity and baseness,in most of the affairs of men?Slop-shirts attainable three halfpence cheaper,by the ruin of living 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 "prevenient grace"?Alas,our le 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 work to be approved of by the gods!Our "Government,"a highly "responsible"one;responsible to God that I can hear of,but to the twenty-seven million gods of the shilling gallery.A Government tumbling and drifting on the whirlpools and mud-deluges,floating atop in a conspicuous manner,whither,--like the carcass of a drowned ass.Authentic Chaos come up into this sunny Cosmos 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-increasing 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 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 egh exclaims:--"When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty,Voluntary Principle,Dangers of Centralization,and the like?It is really getting too bad.For British Liberty,it seems,the people can be taught to read.British Liberty,shuddering to interfere with the rights of capital,takes six or eight millions of money annually to feed the idle laborer whom it dare employ.
For British Liberty we live over poisos cesspools,gully-drains,and detestable abominations;and omnipotent London can sweep the dirt out of itself.British Liberty produces--what?Floods of Hansard Debates every year,and apparently 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 hundreds 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 egh:the model of the world just is England and her Constitution;all Nations striving towards it:poor France swimming these last sixty years in seas of horrid dissolution and confusion,resolute to attain this blessedness of free voting,or to die in chase of it.Prussia too,solid Germany itself,has all broken out into crackling of musketry,loud pamphleteering and Frankfort parliamenting and palavering;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 able,and rather sad to the humane on-looker.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 ceasing to be,a Council of actual Rulers,real Governing Persons (called Peers,Mitred Abbots,Lords,Knights of the Shire,or howsoever called),actually ruling 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 be easy to "imitate"the English Parliament;and the ballot-box and suffrage 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,without lordly quality,or other virtue except cash;and the Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors,masters of Parliamentary Eloquence,Doctors of Political Ecoy,and such like;and all have to be elected by a universal-suffrage ballot-box,--I do see how the English Parliament itself will long continue sea-worthy!Nay,I find England in her own big dumb heart,wherever you come upon her in a silent meditative hour,begins to have dreadful misgivings about it.