he wise; to be guided in the right path by those who know it better
than they. This is the first "right of man;" compared with which all
other rights are as nothing,--mere superfluities, corollaries which will
follow of their own accord out of this; if they be not contradictions
to this, and less than nothing! To the wise it is not a privilege; far
other indeed. Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it
implies preservation of themselves withal; but intrinsically it is the
harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his hand. A
duty which he would fain enough shirk; which accordingly, in these
sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he has long everywhere been
endeavoring to reduce to its minimum, and has in fact in most cases
nearly escaped altogether. It is an ungoverned world; a world which we
flatter ourselves will henceforth need no governing. On the dust of our
heroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is
well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we have
been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow
laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage
forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it
would grow spontaneous crops forever,--find it now in a too questionable
state; peremptorily requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real
"agriculture" is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with
ballot-box or otherwise) than to plough!

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He that is
fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained.
By multifarious devices we have been endeavoring to dispense with
governing; and by very superficial speculations, of _laissez-faire_,
supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade ourselves that it is best so. The
Real Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired
by Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in
sad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil
ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself. The Real Captain
undiscoverable; the Phantasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous:--it is
thought Phantasm Captains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the true method,
after all. They are much the pleasantest for the time being! And so no
_Dux_ or Duke of any sort, in any province of our affairs, now _leads_:
the Duke's Bailiff _leads_, what little leadi