ll,--as in the nutshell-epic
aforesaid.

Well, there are many foolish and some wise, and I, for one, could
heartily wish both classes more justly placed; for he who styles me an
extreme intrepid democrat pays me a compliment to which I have no claim.
While, then, by "kingship" you meant something human and noble, while I
could deem the command you coveted for strong and wise men to be
somewhat which should _lift the weak and unwise above the range of their
own force and intelligence_, I held your prophesying in high esteem, and
readily pardoned any excesses of expression into which your prophetic
_afflatus_ (being Scotch) might betray you.

But your appetite for kingship seems to have gained in strength while it
lost in delicacy and moral significance, till it has become an
insatiable craving, which disdains not to batten on very vile garbage.
If one rule, and another be ruled, and if the domination be open, frank,
and vigorous, you seem to feast on the fact, be this domination as
selfish in its nature and as brutal in its form as it may. Whether its
aim be to uplift or to degrade its subjects, whether it be clean or
filthy, of heaven or of hell, a stress of generous purpose or a mere
emphasis of egotism,--what pause do you make to inquire concerning this?
The appearance is, that any sovereignty, in these democratic days, is
over-welcome to your hunger to admit of pause; and a rule, whose
undisguised aim is, not to supplement the strength of the weak, but to
pillage them of its product, not to lend the ignorant a wisdom above
their own, but to make their ignorance perpetual as a source of
pecuniary profit to their masters, may reckon upon your succors whenever
succors are needed.

Hence your patronage of our slavery. Hence your effort to commend it by
a description so incomparably false, that, though one should laugh
derision at it from Christmas to Candlemas, he would not laugh enough.
"Hiring servants for life,"--that is the most intrepid _lucus a non
lucendo_ of the century. It fairly takes one's breath away. It is
stunning, ravishing. One can but cry, on recovering his wind,--Hear, O
Caucus, and give ear, O Mock-Auction! ye railway Hudsons, tricksters,
impostors, ye demagogues that love the people in stump-speeches at $----
per year, ye hired bravos of the bar that stab justice in the dark, ye
Jesuit priests that "lie for God," listen all, and learn how to do it!
What are your timid devices, compared with this of