In the
center of the world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days,
dwells and speaks a God. The great soul of the world is _just_. O
brother, can it be needful now, at this late epoch of experience,
after eighteen centuries of Christian preaching for one thing, to
remind thee of such a fact; which all manner of Mahometans, old pagan
Romans, Jews, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed more or less
all men that God made, have managed at one time to see into; nay which
thou thyself, till "red-tape" strangled the inner life of thee, hadst
once some inkling of: That there _is_ justice here below; and even, at
bottom, that there is nothing else but justice! Forget that, thou hast
forgotten all. Success will never more attend thee: how can it now?
Thou hast the whole Universe against thee. No more success: mere
sham-success, for a day and days; rising ever higher,--towards its
Tarpeian Rock. Alas, how, in thy softhung Longacre vehicle, of
polished leather to the bodily eye, of red-tape philosophy, of
expediencies, clubroom moralities, Parliamentary majorities to the
mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest: But knowest thou whitherward? Is
it towards the _road's end_? Old use-and-wont; established methods,
habitudes, _once_ true and wise; man's noblest tendency, his
perseverance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia; whatsoever of noble
and ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations, strongest always
in the strongest men and Nations; all this is as a road to thee, paved
smooth through the abyss,--till all this _end_. Till men's bitter
necessities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience with thee
is done; and there is no road or footing any farther, and the abyss
yawns sheer!...

Parliaments and Courts of Westminster are venerable to me; how
venerable; gray with a thousand years of honorable age! For a thousand
years and more, Wisdom, and faithful Valor, struggling amid much Folly
and greedy Baseness, not without most sad distortions in the struggle,
have built them up; and they are as we see. For a thousand years, this
English Nation has found them useful or supportable: they have served
this English Nation's wants; been a road to it through the abyss of
Time. They are venerable, they are great and strong. And yet it is
good to remember always that they are not the venerablest, nor the
greatest, nor the strongest! Acts of Parliament are venerable; but if
they correspond not with the writing on the "Adamant Table