for us all! A Chief Governor of England really ought to
recognize his situation; to discern that, doing nothing, and
merely drifting to and fro, in however constitutional a manner,
he is a squanderer of precious moments, moments that perhaps are
priceless; a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, to a Chief
Governor of England, worthy of that high name,--surely to him, as
to every living man, in every conceivable situation short of the
Kingdom of the Dead--there is _something_ possible; some plan of
action other than that of standing mildly, with crossed arms,
till he and we--sink? Complex as his situation is, he, of all
Governors now extant among these distracted Nations, has, as I
compute, by far the greatest possibilities. The Captains, actual
or potential, are there, and the million Captainless: and such
resources for bringing them together as no other has. To these
outcast soldiers of his, unregimented roving banditti for the
present, or unworking workhouse prisoners who are almost uglier
than banditti; to these floods of Irish Beggars, Able-bodied
Paupers, and nomadic Lackalls, now stagnating or roaming
everywhere, drowning the face of the world (too truly) into an
untenantable swamp and Stygian quagmire, has the Chief Governor
of this country no word whatever to say? Nothing but "Rate in
aid," "Time will mend it," "Necessary business of the Session;"
and "After me the Deluge"? A Chief Governor that can front his
Irish difficulty, and steadily contemplate the horoscope of Irish
and British Pauperism, and whitherward it is leading him and us,
in this humor, must be a--What shall we call such a Chief
Governor? Alas, in spite of old use and wont,--little other than
a tolerated Solecism, growing daily more intolerable! He
decidedly ought to have some word to say on this matter,--to be
incessantly occupied in getting something which he could