ered,
as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, not
the sham-able;--and set to do the work of governing, contriving,
administering and guiding for us!" It is the question of questions.
All that Democracy ever meant lies there: the attainment of a truer and
truer Aristocracy, or Government again by the _Best_.

Reformed Parliaments have lamentably failed to attain it for us; and I
believe will and must forever fail. One true Reforming Statesman, one
noble worshipper and knower of human intellect, with the quality of an
experienced Politician too; he, backed by such a Parliament as England,
once recognizing him, would loyally send, and at liberty to choose his
working subalterns from all the Englishmen alive; he surely might do
something? Something, by one means or another, is becoming fearfully
necessary to be done! He, I think, might accomplish more for us in
ten years, than the best conceivable Reformed Parliament, and utmost
extension of the suffrage, in twice or ten times ten.

What is extremely important too, you could try this method with safety;
extension of the suffrage you cannot so try. With even an approximately
heroic Prime Minister, you could get nothing but good from prescribing
to him thus, to choose the fittest man, under penalties; to choose, not
the fittest of the four or the three men that were in Parliament, but
the fittest from the whole Twenty-seven Millions that he could hear
of,--at his peril. Nothing but good from this. From extension of
the suffrage, some think, you might get quite other than good. From
extension of the suffrage, till it became a universal counting of heads,
one sees not in the least what wisdom could be extracted. A Parliament
of the Paris pattern, such as we see just now, might be extracted: and
from that? Solution into universal slush; drownage of all interests
divine and human, in a Noah's-Deluge of Parliamentary eloquence,--such
as we hope our sins, heavy and manifold though they are, have not yet
quite deserved!

Who, then, is to be the Reforming Statesman, and begin the noble work
for us? He is the preliminary; one such; with him we may prosecute the
enterprise to length after length; without him we cannot stir in it at
all. A true _king_, temporary king, that dare undertake the government
of Britain, on condition of beginning in sacred earnest to "reform" it,
not at this or that extremity, but at the heart and centre. That will
expurgate Downing