the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plummet and level
quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it
comes to hand--! Such bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. _He_ has
forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act
on him; he and his wall rush-down into confused welter of ruin!--

This is the history of all rebellions, French Revolutions, social
explosions in ancient or modern times. You have put the too _Un_able
man at the head of affairs! The too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man.
You have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural necessity
whatever, of putting the Able Man there. Brick must lie on brick as it
may and can. Unable Simulacrum of Ability, _quack_, in a word, must
adjust himself with quack, in all manner of administration of human
things;--which accordingly lie unadministered, fermenting into
unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent misery: in the outward, and
in the inward or spiritual, miserable millions stretch-out the hand
for their due supply, and it is not there. The 'law of gravitation'
acts; Nature's laws do none of them forget to act. The miserable
millions burst-forth into Sansculottism, or some other sort of
madness; bricks and bricklayers lie as a fatal chaos!--

Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the
'Divine right of Kings,' moulders unread now in the Public Libraries
of this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by
which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those
repositories! At the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go
without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind--I will say
that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for
us and all men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you
chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him);
and clapt a round piece of metal on the head of, and called
King,--there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that _he_
became a kind of God, and a Divinity inspired him with faculty and
right to rule over you to all lengths: this,--what can we do with this
but leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries? But I will say
withal, and that is what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings,
and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can
form among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a
Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For