descry the pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press has whirled you
hither and thither, regardless of your struggles and your
shrieks; and here at last you lie; fallen flat into the ditch,
drowning there and dying, unless the others that are still
standing please to pick you up. The others that still stand have
their own difficulties, I can tell you!--But you, by imperfect
energy and redundant appetite, by doing too little work and
drinking too much beer, you (I bid you observe) have proved that
you cannot do it! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And I am
to pick you up again, on these mad terms; help you ever again, as
with our best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the gods
have made impossible? To load the fatal _chain_ with your
perpetual staggerings and sprawlings; and ever again load it,
till we all lie sprawling? My indigent incompetent friends, I
will not! Know that, whoever may be 'sons of freedom,' you for
your part are not and cannot be such. Not 'free' you, I think,
whoever may be free. You palpably are fallen
captive,--_caitiff_, as they once named it:--you do, silently but
eloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that some
genuine command be taken of you.

"Yes, my indigent incompetent friends; some genuine practical
command. Such,--if I rightly interpret those mad Chartisms,
Repeal Agitations, Red Republics, and other delirious
inarticulate howlings and bellowings which all the populations of
the world now utter, evidently cries of pain on their and your
part,--is the demand which you, Captives, make of all men that
are not Captive, but are still Free. Free men,--alas, had you
ever any notion who the free men were, who the not-free, the
incapable of freedom! The free men, if you could have understood