universal vital Problem of the world.

To bring these hordes of outcast captainless soldiers under due
captaincy? This is really the question of questions; on the
answer to which turns, among other things, the fate of all
Governments, constitutional and other,--the possibility of their
continuing to exist, or the impossibility. Captainless,
uncommanded, these wretched outcast "soldiers," since they
cannot starve, must needs become banditti,
street-barricaders,--destroyers of every Government that _cannot_
put them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in
short render life human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws,
which we once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently
fast breaking down. Ireland, now admitted into the Idle
Workhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces. That never was a
"human" destiny for any honest son of Adam; nowhere but in
England could it have lasted at all; and now, with Ireland sharer
in it, and the fulness of time come, it is as good as ended.
Alas, yes. Here in Connemara, your crazy Ship of the State,
otherwise dreadfully rotten in many of its timbers I believe, has
sprung a leak: spite of all hands at the pump, the water is
rising; the Ship, I perceive, will founder, if you cannot stop
this leak!

To bring these Captainless under due captaincy? The anxious
thoughts of all men that do think are turned upon that question;
and their efforts, though as yet blindly and to no purpose, under
the multifarious impediments and obscurations, all point
thitherward. Isolated men, and their vague efforts, cannot do
it. Government everywhere is called upon,--in England as loudly