t the fundamental duty of a government is to preserve order, to
enforce obedience of the laws. It has been held hitherto that a man can
be depended on as a guardian of order only when he has much money and
comfort to lose. But a better state of things would be, that men who had
little money and not much comfort should still be guardians of order,
because they had sense to see that disorder would do no good, and had a
heart of justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them from making more
misery only because they felt some misery themselves. There are
thousands of artisans who have already shown this fine spirit, and have
endured much with patient heroism. If such a spirit spread, and
penetrated us all, we should soon become the masters of the country in
the best sense and to the best ends. For, the public order being
preserved, there can be no government in future that will not be
determined by our insistance on our fair and practicable demands. It is
only by disorder that our demands will be choked, that we shall find
ourselves lost among a brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of the
country opposed to us, and see government in the shape of guns that will
sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom of fools.

It has been a too common notion that to insist much on the preservation
of order is the part of a selfish aristocracy and a selfish commercial
class, because among these, in the nature of things, have been found the
opponents of change. I am a Radical; and, what is more, I am not a
Radical with a title, or a French cook, or even an entrance into fine
society. I expect great changes, and I desire them. But I don't expect
them to come in a hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Hercules with
a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy stable, but not for weeding a
seed-bed, where his besom would soon make a barren floor.

That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say. We know all that.

Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, most people think they know
them; but, after all, they are comparatively few who see the small
degrees by which those extremes are arrived at, or have the resolution
and self-control to resist the little impulses by which they creep on
surely toward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning to ruin himself,
or to drink himself to death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a
despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in winter. Yet
there are plenty, of whose lot thi