it? By centrifugal force the dingy wool mantle heaves itself;
spreads more and more, like upturned cup widening into upturned
saucer: thus spins he, to the praise of Allah and advantage of
mankind, fast and faster, till collapse ensue, and sometimes
death!--

A Government such as ours, consisting of from seven to eight
hundred Parliamentary Talkers, with their escort of Able Editors
and Public Opinion; and for head, certain Lords and Servants of
the Treasury, and Chief Secretaries and others, who find
themselves at once Chiefs and No-Chiefs, and often commanded
rather than commanding,--is doubtless a most complicate entity,
and none of the alertest for getting on with business! Clearly
enough, if the Chiefs be not self-motive and what we call men,
but mere patient lay-figures without self-motive principle, the
Government will not move anywhither; it will tumble
disastrously, and jumble, round its own axis, as for many years
past we have seen it do.--And yet a self-motive man who is not a
lay-figure, place him in the heart of what entity you may, will
make it move more or less! The absurdest in Nature he will make
a little _less_ absurd; he. The unwieldiest he will make to
move;--that is the use of his existing there. He will at least
have the manfulness to depart out of it, if not; to say: "I
cannot move in thee, and be a man; like a wretched drift-log
dressed in man's clothes and minister's clothes, doomed to a lot
baser than belongs to man, I will not continue with thee,
tumbling aimless on the Mother of Dead Dogs here:--Adieu!"

For, on the whole, it is the lot of Chiefs everywhere, this same.
No Chief in the most despotic country but was a Servant withal;
at once an absolute commanding General, and a poor Orderly-
Sergeant, ordered by the very men in the ranks,--obliged to
collect the vote of the ranks too, in some articulate or
inarticulate shape, and weigh well the same. The proper name of
all Kings is Minister, Servant. In no conceivable Government can
a lay-figure get forward! _This_ Worker, surely he above all
others has to 'spread out his Gideon's Fleece,' and collect the
monitions of Immensity; the poor Localities, as we said, and
parishes of Palace-yard or elsewhere, having no due monition in
them. A Prime Minister, even here in England, who shall dare
believe the heavenly omens, and address himself like a man and
hero to the great dumb-struggling heart of England; and speak
out for it,