Mr. People's Candidate, Demagogue, Fenian Spouter;
or whoever you may be, professing to know aught or do anything in
matters of policy, consider, what I am sure you have never fairly
weighed, the condition of a man whose clearest notion of
Government is derived from the Police! Imagine one who had never
seen a polyp trying to construct an ideal of the animal, from a
single tentacle swinging out from the tangle of weed in which the
rest was wrapped! How then any more can you fancy that a man to
whose sight and knowledge the only part of government practically
exposed is the strong process of police, shall form a proper
conception of the functions, reasons, operations, and relations
of Government; or even build up an ideal of anything but a
haughty, unreasonable, antagonistic, tax-imposing FORCE! And how
can you rule such a being except as you rule a dog, by that which
alone he understands--the dog-whip of the constable! Given in a
country a majority of creatures like these, and surely despotism
is its properest complement. But when they exist, as they exist
in England to-day, in hundreds of thousands, in town and country,
think what a complication they introduce into your theoretic free
system of government. Acts of Parliament passed by a
"freely-elected" House of Commons, and an hereditary House of
Lords under the threats of freely-electing citizens, however pure
in intention and correct in principle, will not seem to him to be
the resultants of every wish in the community so much as
dictations by superior strength. To these the obedience he will
render will not be the loving assent of his heart, but a
begrudged concession to circumstance. Your awe-invested
legislature is not viewed as his friend and brother-helper, but
his tyrant. Therefore the most natural bent of his
workman-statesmanship--a rough, bungling affair--will be to tame