Let it take warning by the Whigs; and suspect
(as many a looker-on more than suspects) that its triumph may be, as
with the Whigs, its ruin; and that, having done the work for which
it was sent into the world, there may only remain for it, to decay
and die.

And die it surely will, if (as seems too probable) there succeeds to
this late thirty years of peace a thirty years of storm.

For it has lost all hold upon the young, the active, the daring. It
has sunk into a compromise between originally opposite dogmas. It
has become a religion for Jacob the smooth man; adapted to the
maxims of the market, and leaving him full liberty to supplant his
brother by all methods lawful in that market. No longer can it
embrace and explain all known facts of God and man, in heaven and
earth, and satisfy utterly such minds and hearts as those of
Cromwell's Ironsides, or the Scotch Covenanters, or even of a Newton
and a Colonel Gardiner. Let it make the most of its Hedley Vicars
and its Havelock, and sound its own trumpet as loudly as it can, in
sounding theirs; for they are the last specimens of heroism which it
is likely to beget--if indeed it did in any true sense beget them,
and if their gallantry was really owing to their creed, and not to
the simple fact of their being--like others--English gentlemen.
Well may Jacob's chaplains cackle in delighted surprise over their
noble memories, like geese who have unwittingly hatched a swan!

But on Esau in general:--on poor rough Esau, who sails Jacob's
ships, digs Jacob's mines, founds Jacob's colonies, pours out his
blood for him in those wars which Jacob himself has stirred up--
while his sleek brother sits at home in his counting-house, enjoying
at once 'the means of grace' and the produce of Esau's labour--on
him Jacob's chaplains have less and less influence; for him they
have less and less good news. He is afraid of them, and they of
him; the two do not comprehend one another, sympathise with one
another; they do not even understand one another's speech. The same
social and moral gulf has opened between them, as parted the
cultivated and wealthy Pharisee of Jerusalem from the rough fishers
of the Galilaean Lake: and yet the Galilaean fishers (if we are to
trust Josephus and the Gospels) were trusty, generous, affectionate-
-and it was not from among the Pharisees, it is said, that the
Apostles were chosen.

Be that as it may, Esau has a birth