Can anything be more unreasonable than a Seventy-four?
Articulately almost nothing. But it has inarticulate traditions, ancient
methods and habitudes in it, stoicisms, noblenesses, _true_ rules
both of sailing and of conduct; enough to keep it afloat on Nature's
veridical bosom, after all. See; if you bid it sail to the end of the
world, it will lift anchor, go, and arrive. The raging oceans do not
beat it back; it too, as well as the raging oceans, has a relationship
to Nature, and it does not sink, but under the due conditions is borne
along. If it meet with hurricanes, it rides them out; if it meet an
Enemy's ship, it shivers it to powder; and in short, it holds on its
way, and to a wonderful extent _does_ what it means and pretends to do.
Assure yourself, my friend, there is an immense fund of truth somewhere
or other stowed in that Seventy-four."

More important than the past history of these Offices in Downing Street,
is the question of their future history; the question, How they are
to be got mended! Truly an immense problem, inclusive of all others
whatsoever; which demands to be attacked, and incessantly persisted in,
by all good citizens, as the grand problem of Society, and the one thing
needful for the Commonwealth! A problem in which all men, with all their
wisdoms and all their virtues, faithfully and continually co-operating
at it, will never have done _enough_, and will still only be struggling
_towards_ perfection in it. In which some men can do much;--in which
every man can do something. Every man, and thou my present Reader canst
do this: _Be_ thyself a man abler to be governed; more reverencing the
divine faculty of governing, more sacredly detesting the diabolical
semblance of said faculty in self and others; so shalt thou, if not
govern, yet actually according to thy strength assist in real governing.
And know always, and even lay to heart with a quite unusual solemnity,
with a seriousness altogether of a religious nature, that as "Human
Stupidity" is verily the accursed parent of all this mischief, so
Human Intelligence alone, to which and to which only is victory and
blessedness appointed here below, will or can cure it. If we knew
this as devoutly as we ought to do, the evil, and all other evils were
curable;--alas, if we had from of old known this, as all men made in
God's image ought to do, the evil never would have been! Perhaps few
Nations have ever known it less than we, for a good while