The notion that a man's liberty consists in giving his vote at
election-hustings, and saying, "Behold now I too have my twenty-
thousandth part of a Talker in our National Palaver; will not
all the gods be good to me?"--is one of the pleasantest! Nature
nevertheless is kind at present; and puts it into the heads of
many, almost of all. The liberty especially which has to
purchase itself by social isolation, and each man standing
separate from the other, having 'no business with him' but a
cash-account: this is such a liberty as the Earth seldom saw;--
as the Earth will not long put up with, recommend it how you may.
This liberty turns out, before it have long continued in action,
with all men flinging up their caps round it, to be, for the
Working Millions a liberty to die by want of food; for the Idle
Thousands and Units, alas, a still more fatal liberty to live in
want of work; to have no earnest duty to do in this God's-World
any more. What becomes of a man in such predicament? Earth's
Laws are silent; and Heaven's speak in a voice which is not
heard. No work, and the ineradicable need of work, give rise to
new very wondrous life-philosophies, new very wondrous life-
practices! Dilettantism, Pococurantism, Beau-Brummelism, with
perhaps an occasional, half-mad, protesting burst of Byronism,
establish themselves: at the end of a certain period,--if you go
back to 'the Dead Sea,' there is, say our Moslem friends, a very
strange 'Sabbath-day' transacting itself there!--Brethren, we
know but imperfectly yet, after ages of Constitutional
Government, what Liberty is and Slavery is.

Democracy, the chase of Liberty in that direction, shall go its
full course; unrestrainable by him of Pferdefuss-Quacksalber, or
any of _his_ household. The Toiling Millions of Mankind, in most
vital need and passionate instinctive desire of Guidance, shall
cast away False-Guidance; and hope, for an hour, that No-
Guidance will suffice them: but it can be for an hour only. The
smallest item of human Slavery is the oppression of man by his
Mock-Superiors; the palpablest, but I say at bottom the
smallest. Let him shake off such oppression, trample it
indignantly under his feet; I blame him not, I pity and commend
him. But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well shaken off, the
grand problem yet remains to solve: That of finding government
by your Real-Superiors! Alas, how shall we ever learn the
solution of that, benighte