s altered much from what it was in past times; and it will again
have to alter very much, to alter I think from top to bottom, if it
means to continue existing in the times that are now coming and come!

The State, left to shape itself by dim pedantries and traditions,
without distinctness of conviction, or purpose beyond that of helping
itself over the difficulty of the hour, has become, instead of a
luminous vitality permeating with its light all provinces of our
affairs, a most monstrous agglomerate of inanities, as little adapted
for the actual wants of a modern community as the worst citizen need
wish. The thing it is doing is by no means the thing we want to have
done. What we want! Let the dullest British man endeavor to raise in his
mind this question, and ask himself in sincerity what the British Nation
wants at this time. Is it to have, with endless jargoning, debating,
motioning and counter-motioning, a settlement effected between the
Honorable Mr. This and the Honorable Mr. That, as to their respective
pretensions to ride the high horse? Really it is unimportant which of
them ride it. Going upon past experience long continued now, I should
say with brevity, "Either of them--Neither of them." If our Government
is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Fling
an orange-skin into St. James's Street; let the man it hits be your man.
He, if you breed him a little to it, and tie the due official bladders
to his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem of
balancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded-pole in his
hands; and will, with straddling painful gestures, float hither and
thither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while,
as well as his foregoers did, till he also capsize, and be left floating
feet uppermost; after which you choose another.

What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all corners
of your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is the
function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out
your orange-skin again; and save an incalculable labor, and an emission
of nonsense and falsity, and electioneering beer and bribery and
balderdash, which is terrible to think of, in deciding. Your National
Parliament, in so far as it has only that question to decide, may be
considered as an enormous National Palaver existing mainly for imaginary
purposes; and certain, in these days of abb