incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast
labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made
England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-
twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble
defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy
silence into which the country fell was by far the darkest aspect
in which a great people had been exhibited for many years. With
shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and
this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of
ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us--with little
adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding
of the general mind, in Parliament--with the machinery of
Government and the legislature going round and round, and the
people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its
last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved
the destruction of so much that was dear to them--I did and do
believe that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could
possibly take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of
the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty
to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the
administration of their own affairs. At such a crisis this
association arose; at such a crisis I joined it: considering its
further case to be--if further case could possibly be needed--that
what is everybody's business is nobody's business, that men must be
gregarious in good citizenship as well as in other things, and that
it is a law in nature that there must be a centre of attraction for
particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with recognised
functions can come into existence. This association has arisen,
and we belong to it. What are the objections to it? I have heard
in the main but three, which I will now briefly notice. It is said