ormer selves.

This new theory of politics has at least the merit of originality. It
may be fairly stated thus. All men have hitherto been utterly in the
wrong as to the nature and objects of civil government. The great truth,
hidden from every preceding generation, and at length revealed, in the
year 1846, to some highly respectable ministers and elders of dissenting
congregations, is this. Government is simply a great hangman. Government
ought to do nothing except by harsh and degrading means. The one
business of Government is to handcuff, and lock up, and scourge, and
shoot, and stab, and strangle. It is odious tyranny in a government to
attempt to prevent crime by informing the understanding and elevating
the moral feeling of a people. A statesman may see hamlets turned, in
the course of one generation, into great seaport towns and manufacturing
towns. He may know that on the character of the vast population which is
collected in those wonderful towns, depends the prosperity, the peace,
the very existence of society. But he must not think of forming that
character. He is an enemy of public liberty if he attempts to prevent
those hundreds of thousands of his countrymen from becoming mere Yahoos.
He may, indeed, build barrack after barrack to overawe them. If they
break out into insurrection, he may send cavalry to sabre them: he may
mow them down with grape shot: he may hang them, draw them, quarter
them, anything but teach them. He may see, and may shudder as he sees,
throughout large rural districts, millions of infants growing up from
infancy to manhood as ignorant, as mere slaves of sensual appetite, as
the beasts that perish. No matter. He is a traitor to the cause of civil
and religious freedom if he does not look on with folded arms, while
absurd hopes and evil passions ripen in that rank soil. He must wait for
the day of his harvest. He must wait till the Jaquerie comes, till farm
houses are burning, till threshing machines are broken in pieces; and
then begins his business, which is simply to send one poor ignorant
savage to the county gaol, and another to the antipodes, and a third to
the gallows.

Such, Sir, is the new theory of government which was first propounded,
in the year 1846, by some men of high note among the Nonconformists of
England. It is difficult to understand how men of excellent abilities
and excellent intentions--and there are, I readily admit, such men
among those who hold this theory--