Let the dullest British man endeavor to raise in his mind this question,and ask himself in sincerity what the British Nation wants at this time.Is it to have,with endless jargoning,debating,motioning and counter-motioning,a settlement effected between the Hoable Mr.This and the Hoable Mr.That,as to their respective pretensions to ride the high horse?Really it is unimportant which of them ride it.Going upon past experience long continued ,I should say with brevity,"Either of them--Neither of them."If our Government is to be a Government,what is the matter who administers it?Fling an orange-skin into St.James's Street;let the man it hits be your man.He,if you breed him a little to it,and tie the due official bladders to his ankles,will do as well as aher this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the vortexes,with the long loaded-pole in his hands;and will,with straddling painful gestures,float hither and thither,walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while,as well as his foregoers did,till he also capsize,and be left floating feet uppermost;after which you choose aher.
What an immense pother,by parliamenting and palavering in all corners of your empire,to decide such a question as that!Isay,if that is the function,almost any human creature can learn to discharge it:fling out your orange-skin again;and save an incalculable labor,and an emission of sense and falsity,and electioneering beer and bribery and balderdash,which is terrible to think of,in deciding.Your National Parliament,in so far as it has only that question to decide,may be considered as an emous National Palaver existing mainly for imaginary purposes;and certain,in these days of abbreviated labor,to get itself sent home again to its partridge-shootings,fox-huntings,and above all,to its rat-catchings,if it could but understand the time of day,and k (as our indignant Crabbe remarks)that "the real Nimrod of this era,who alone does any good to the era,is the rat-catcher!"The ion that any Government is or can be a Government,without the deadliest peril to all le interests of the Commonwealth,and by degrees slower or swifter to all igle ones also,and to the very gully-drains,and thief lodging-houses,and Mosaic sweating establishments,and at last without destruction to such Government itself,--was never my ion;and I hope it will soon cease altogether to be the world's or to be anybody's.But if it be the correct ion,as the world seems at present to flatter itself,I point out improvements and abbreviations.Dismiss your National Palaver;make the Times Newspaper your National Palaver,which needs beer-barrels or hustings,and is cheaper in expense of money and of falsity a thousand and a million fold;have an ecoical red-tape drilling establishment (it were easier to devise such a thing than a right Modern University );--and fling out your orange-skin among the graduates,when you want a new Premier.
A mighty question indeed!Who shall be Premier,and take in hand the "rudder of government,"otherwise called the "spigot of taxation;"shall it be the Hoable Felix Parvulus,or the Right Hoable Felicissimus Zero?By our electioneerings and Hansard Debatings,and ever-enduring tempest of jargon that goes on everywhere,we manage to settle that;to have it declared,with bloodshed except insignificant blood from the e in hustings-time,but with immense beershed and inkshed and explosion of sense,which darkens all the air,that the Right Hoable Zero is to be the man.That we firmly settle;Zero,all shivering with rapture and with terror,mounts into the high saddle;cramps himself on,with knees,heels,hands and feet;and the horse gallops--whither it lists.That the Right Hoable Zero should attempt controlling the horse--Alas,alas,he,sticking on with beak and claws,is too happy if the horse will only gallop any-whither,and throw him.Measure,polity,plan or scheme of public good or evil,is in the head of Felicissimus;except,if he could but devise it,some measure that would please his horse for the moment,and encourage him to go with softer paces,godward or devilward as it might be,and save Felicissimus's leather,which is fast wearing.This is what we call a Government in England,for nearly two centuries .
I wish Felicissimus were saddle-sick forever and a day!He is a dreadful object,however much we are used to him.If the horse had been bred and broken in,for a thousand years,by real riders and horse-subduers,perhaps the best and bravest the world ever saw,what would have become of Felicissimus and him long since?This horse,by second-nature,religiously respects all fences;gallops,if never so madly,on the highways alone;--seems to me,of late,like a desperate Sleswick thunder-horse who had lost his way,galloping in the labyrinthic lanes of a woody flat country;passionate to reach his goal;unable to reach it,because in the flat leafy lanes there is outlook whatever,and in the bridle there is guidance whatever.So he gallops stormfully along,thinking it is forward and forward;and alas,it is only round and round,out of one old lane into the other;--nay (according to some)"he mistakes his own footprints ,which of course grow ever more numerous,for the sign of a more and more frequented road;"and his despair is hourly increasing.My impression is,he is certain soon,such is the growth of his necessity and his despair,to--plunge across the fence,into an opener survey of the country;and to sweep Felicissimus off his back,and comb him away very tragically in the process!Poor Sleswicker,I wish you were better ridden.I perceive it lies in the Fates you must either be better ridden,or else long at all.This plunging in the heavy labyrinth of over-shaded lanes,with one's stomach getting empty,one's Ireland falling into cannibalism,and vestige of a goal either visible or possible,can last.