means, talk. Not to speak your opinion well, but to have a good and
just opinion worth speaking,--for every Parliament, as for every man,
this latter is the point. Contrive to have a true opinion, you will get
it told in some way, better or worse; and it will be a blessing to all
creatures. Have a false opinion, and tell it with the tongue of Angels,
what can that profit? The better you tell it, the worse it will be!

In Parliament and out of Parliament, and everywhere in this Universe,
your one salvation is, That you can discern with just insight, and
follow with noble valor, what the law of the case before you is, what
the appointment of the Maker in regard to it has been. Get this out
of one man, you are saved; fail to get this out of the most August
Parliament wrapt in the sheepskins of a thousand years, you are
lost,--your Parliament, and you, and all your sheepskins are lost.
Beautiful talk is by no means the most pressing want in Parliament! We
have had some reasonable modicum of talk in Parliament! What talk has
done for us in Parliament, and is now doing, the dullest of us at length
begins to see!

Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to business; of the
training an Official Man gets in this school of argument and talk. He is
here inured to patience, tolerance; sees what is what in the Nation and
in the Nation's Government attains official knowledge, official
courtesy and manners--in short, is polished at all points into official
articulation, and here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to be
a Governor of men. So it is said.--Doubtless, I think, he will see and
suffer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things;--he
will, with what eyes he has, gradually _see_ Parliament itself, for one
thing; what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, ever-babbling yet
inarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly one of the strangest
under the sun just now): which doubtless, if he have in view to get
measures voted there one day, will be an important acquisition for him.
But as to breeding himself for a Doer of Work, much more for a King, or
Chief of Doers, here in this element of talk; as to that I confess
the fatalest doubts, or rather, alas, I have no doubt! Alas, it is
our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently
requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be a
Statesman, or Chief of _Workers_, till he has first proved himself
a Chief of _Talkers_: w