Good Heavens,from the wisest Thought of a man to the actual truth of a Thing as it lies in Nature,there is,one would suppose,a sufficient interval!Consider it,--and what other intervals we introduce!The faithfulest,most glowing word of a man is but an imperfect image of the thought,such as it is,that dwells within him;his best word will never but with error convey his thought to other minds:and then between his poor thought and Nature's Fact,which is the Thought of the Eternal,there may be supposed to lie some discrepancies,some shortcomings!Speak your sincerest,think your wisest,there is still a great gulf between you and the fact.And ,do speak your sincerest,and what will inevitably follow out of that,do think your wisest,but think only your plausiblest,your showiest for parliamentary purposes,where will you land with that guidance?--I invite the British Parliament,and all the Parliamentary and other Electors of Great Britain,to reflect on this till they have well understood it;and then to ask,each of himself,What probably the horoscopes of the British Parliament,at this epoch of World-History,may be?--Fail,by any sin or any misfortune,to discover what the truth of the fact is,you are lost so far as that fact goes!If your thought do image truly but do image falsely the fact,you will vainly try to work upon the fact.The fact will obey you,the fact will silently resist you;and ever,with silent invincibility,will go on resisting you,till you do get to image it truly instead of falsely.help for you whatever,except in attaining to a true image of the fact.Needless to vote a false image true;vote it,revote it by overwhelming majorities,by jubilant unanimities and universalities;read it thrice or three hundred times,pass acts of parliament upon it till the Statute-book can hold more,--it helps a whit:the thing is so,the thing is otherwise than so;and Adam's whole Posterity,voting daily on it till the world finish,will alter it a jot.Can the sublimest sanhedrim,constitutional parliament,or other Collective Wisdom of the world,persuade fire to burn,sulphuric acid to be sweet milk,or the Moon to become green cheese?The fact is much the reverse:--and even the Constitutional British Parliament abstains from such arduous attempts as these latter in the voting line;and leaves the multiplication-table,the chemical,mechanical and other qualities of material substances to take their own course;being aware that voting and perorating,and reporting in Hansard,will in the least alter any of these.Which is indisputably wise of the British Parliament.
Unfortunately the British Parliament does ,at present,quite k that all manner of things and relations of things,spiritual equally with material,all manner of qualities,entities,existences whatsoever,in this strange visible and invisible Universe,are equally inflexible of nature;that,they will,one and all,with precisely the same obstinacy,continue to obey their own law,our law;deaf as the adder to all charm of parliamentary eloquence,and of voting never so often repeated;silently,but inflexibly and forevermore,declining to change themselves,even as sulphuric acid declines to become sweet milk,though you vote so to the end of the world.This,it sometimes seems to me,is quite sufficiently laid hold of by the British and other Parliaments just at present.Which surely is a great misfortune to said Parliaments!For,it would appear,the grand point,after all constitutional improvements,and such wagging of wigs in Westminster as there has been,is precisely what it was before any constitution was yet heard of,or the first official wig had budded out of hing:namely,to ascertain what the truth of your question,in Nature,really is!
Verily so.In this time and place,as in all past and in all future times and places.To-day in St.Stephen's,where constitutional,philanthropical,and other great things lie in the mortar-kit;even as on the Plain of Shinar long ago,where a certain Tower,likewise of a very philanthropic nature,indeed one of the desirablest towers I ever heard of,was to be built,--but couldn't!My friends,I do laugh;truly I am more inclined to weep.
Get,by six hundred and fifty-eight votes,or by vote at all,by the silent intimation of your own eyesight and understanding given you direct out of Heaven,and more sacred to you than anything earthly,and than all things earthly,--a correct image of the fact in question,as God and Nature have made it:that is the one thing needful;with that it shall be well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact.Get,by the sublimest constitutional methods,belauded by all the world,an incorrect image of the fact:so shall it be other than well with you;so shall you have laud from able editors and vociferous masses of mistaken human creatures;and from the Nature's Fact,continuing quite silently the same as it was,contradiction,and that only.
What else?Will Nature change,or sulphuric acid become sweet milk,for the se of vociferous blockheads?Surely .
Nature,I assure you,has the smallest intention of doing so.