on in order to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine
war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a man: it must be ridden
by rationality, skill, courage, armed with the right weapons, and taking
definite aim.

We have reason to be discontented with many things, and, looking back
either through the history of England to much earlier generations or to
the legislation and administrations of later times, we are justified in
saying that many of the evils under which our country now suffers are the
consequences of folly, ignorance, neglect, or self-seeking in those who,
at different times have wielded the powers of rank, office, and money.
But the more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly we utter it, the
stronger is the obligation we lay on ourselves to beware, lest we also,
by a too hasty wresting of measures which seem to promise an immediate
partial relief, make a worse time of it for our own generation, and leave
a bad inheritance to our children. The deepest curse of wrong-doing,
whether of the foolish or wicked sort, is that its effects are difficult
to be undone. I suppose there is hardly anything more to be shuddered at
than that part of the history of disease which shows how, when a man
injures his constitution by a life of vicious excess, his children and
grandchildren inherit diseased bodies and minds, and how the effects of
that unhappy inheritance continue to spread beyond our calculation. This
is only one example of the law by which human lives are linked together;
another example of what we complain of when we point to our pauperism, to
the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow countrymen, to the
weight of taxation laid on us by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels
made for the public money, to the expense and trouble of getting justice,
and call these the effects of bad rule. This is the law that we all bear
the yoke of, the law of no man's making, and which no man can undo.
Everybody now sees an example of it in the case of Ireland. We who are
living now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of those who lived before us;
we are the sufferers by each other's wrong-doing; and the children who
come after us are and will be sufferers from the same causes. Will any
man say he doesn't care for that law--it is nothing to him--what he wants
is to better himself? With what face then will he complain of any
injury? If he says that in politics or in any sort of social action he
will not care to know