these wretched outcast
"soldiers," since they cannot starve, must needs become banditti,
street-barricaders,--destroyers of every Government that _cannot_ put
them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short render
life human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws, which we once piqued
ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently fast breaking down. Ireland,
now admitted into the Idle Workhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces.
That never was a "human" destiny for any honest son of Adam; nowhere but
in England could it have lasted at all; and now, with Ireland sharer
in it, and the fulness of time come, it is as good as ended. Alas, yes.
Here in Connemara, your crazy Ship of the State, otherwise dreadfully
rotten in many of its timbers I believe, has sprung a leak: spite of
all hands at the pump, the water is rising; the Ship, I perceive, will
founder, if you cannot stop this leak!

To bring these Captainless under due captaincy? The anxious thoughts of
all men that do think are turned upon that question; and their efforts,
though as yet blindly and to no purpose, under the multifarious
impediments and obscurations, all point thitherward. Isolated men,
and their vague efforts, cannot do it. Government everywhere is called
upon,--in England as loudly as elsewhere,--to give the initiative. A
new strange task of these new epochs; which no Government, never
so "constitutional," can escape from undertaking. For it is vitally
necessary to the existence of Society itself; it must be undertaken, and
succeeded in too, or worse will follow,--and, as we already see in Irish
Connaught and some other places, will follow soon. To whatever
thing still calls itself by the name of Government, were it never so
constitutional and impeded by official impossibilities, all men will
naturally look for help, and direction what to do, in this extremity.
If help or direction is not given; if the thing called Government merely
drift and tumble to and fro, no-whither, on the popular vortexes, like
some carcass of a drowned ass, constitutionally put "at the top of
affairs," popular indignation will infallibly accumulate upon it; one
day, the popular lightning, descending forked and horrible from the
black air, will annihilate said supreme carcass, and smite it home
to its native ooze again!--Your Lordship, this is too true, though
irreverently spoken: indeed one knows not how to speak of it; and to me
it is infinitely sad and misera