home, we have lived this century or two! To heights and depths
of social and individual _divorce_ from delusions,--of "reform"
in right sacred earnest, of indispensable amendment, and stern
sorrowful abrogation and order to depart,--such as cannot well be
spoken at present; as dare scarcely be thought at present; which
nevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps rather imminent
several of them! Truly we have a heavy task of work before us;
and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon
it, before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which there
will be no working, but only suffering and hopelessly
perishing!


Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, will itself
manage it? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnished
with ballot-boxes and such like, will itself accomplish the
salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make a new
blessed world of us by and by?--To the great mass of men, I am
aware, the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side.
Democracy they consider to _be_ a kind of "Government." The old
model, formed long since, and brought to perfection in England
now two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself to all Nations
as the new healing for every woe: "Set up a Parliament," the
Nations everywhere say, when the old King is detected to be a
Sham-King, and hunted out or not; "set up a Parliament; let us
have suffrages, universal suffrages; and all either at once or by
due degrees will be right, and a real Millennium come!" Such is
their way of construing the matter.

Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the matter; if it