bind him by other, far nobler and cunninger
methods. Once for all, he is to be loose of the brass-collar, to have
a scope _as_ wide as his faculties now are:--will he not be all the
usefuler to you in that new state? Let him go abroad as a trusted one,
as a free one; and return home to you with rich earnings at night!
Gurth could only tend pigs; this one will build cities, conquer waste
worlds.--How, in conjunction with inevitable Democracy, indispensable
Sovereignty is to exist: certainly it is the hugest question ever
heretofore propounded to Mankind! The solution of which is work for
long years and centuries. Years and centuries, of one knows not what
complexion;--blessed or unblessed, according as they shall, with
earnest valiant effort, make progress therein, or, in slothful
unveracity and dilettantism, only talk of making progress. For either
progress therein, or swift and ever swifter progress towards
dissolution, is henceforth a necessity.

* * * * *

It is of importance that this grand reformation were begun; that
Corn-Law Debatings and other jargon, little less than delirious in
such a time, had fled far away, and left us room to begin! For the
evil has grown practical, extremely conspicuous; if it be not seen and
provided for, the blindest fool will have to feel it ere long. There
is much that can wait; but there is something also that cannot wait.
With millions of eager Working Men imprisoned in 'Impossibility' and
Poor-Law Bastilles, it is time that some means of dealing with them
were trying to become 'possible'! Of the Government of England, of all
articulate-speaking functionaries, real and imaginary Aristocracies,
of me and of thee, it is imperatively demanded, "How do you mean to
manage these men? Where are they to find a supportable existence? What
is to become of them,--and of you!"

CHAPTER II.

BRIBERY COMMITTEE.

In the case of the late Bribery Committee, it seemed to be the
conclusion of the soundest practical minds that Bribery could not be
put down; that Pure Election was a thing we had seen the last of, and
must now go on without, as we best could. A conclusion not a little
startling; to which it requires a practical mind of some seasoning to
reconcile yourself at once! It seems, then, we are henceforth to get
ourselves constituted Legislators not according to what merit we may
have, or even what merit we may seem to have, but according to the
leng