Latter-Day Pamphlets | Page 9

divorce from
delusions,--of "reform" in right sacred earnest, of indispensable
amendment, and stern sorrowful abrogation and order to depart,--such
as cannot well be spoken at present; as dare scarcely be thought at
present; which nevertheless are very inevitable, and perhaps rather
imminent several of them! Truly we have a heavy task of work before
us; and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon it,
before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which there will be no
working, but only suffering and hopelessly perishing!
Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, will itself
manage it? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, furnished with
ballot-boxes and such like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal
change from Delusive to Real, and make a new blessed world of us by
and by?--To the great mass of men, I am aware, the matter presents
itself quite on this hopeful side. Democracy they consider to be a kind
of "Government." The old model, formed long since, and brought to

perfection in England now two hundred years ago, has proclaimed itself
to all Nations as the new healing for every woe: "Set up a Parliament,"
the Nations everywhere say, when the old King is detected to be a
Sham-King, and hunted out or not; "set up a Parliament; let us have
suffrages, universal suffrages; and all either at once or by due degrees
will be right, and a real Millennium come!" Such is their way of
construing the matter.
Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the matter; if it were, I
should have had the happiness of remaining silent, and been without
call to speak here. It is because the contrary of all this is deeply
manifest to me, and appears to be forgotten by multitudes of my
contemporaries, that I have had to undertake addressing a word to them.
The contrary of all this;--and the farther I look into the roots of all this,
the more hateful, ruinous and dismal does the state of mind all this
could have originated in appear to me. To examine this recipe of a
Parliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay how fit it may now
be, in these new times, for governing England itself where we are used
to it so long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinking men,
and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for the small still
voices and eternal intimations, across the temporary clamors and loud
blaring proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the
rigorous fact itself; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand
practical decision or redecision of it from us,--with enormous penalty if
we decide it wrong! I think we shall all have to consider this question,
one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may be less. If
a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or any conceivable kind of
suffrages, is the method, then certainly let us set about discovering the
kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. But it is
possible a Parliament may not be the method! Possible the inveterate
notions of the English People may have settled it as the method, and the
Everlasting Laws of Nature may have settled it as not the method! Not
the whole method; nor the method at all, if taken as the whole? If a
Parliament with never such suffrages is not the method settled by this
latter authority, then it will urgently behoove us to become aware of
that fact, and to quit such method;--we may depend upon it, however
unanimous we be, every step taken in that direction will, by the Eternal
Law of things, be a step from improvement, not towards it.

Not towards it, I say, if so! Unanimity of voting,--that will do nothing
for us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans
of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in
the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get
round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and
fixed with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are
entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting,
ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get
round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever
back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from
Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic "admonition;" you will be
flung half frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers
by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and
will never get round Cape Horn at all! Unanimity on board ship;--yes
indeed, the ship's crew may