e understood that 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 insistence on our fair and
practicable demands. It is only by disorder that our demands will be
choked, that we shall find ourselves lost amongst 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.

The eighteen essays published as the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_
purport to have been the work of a bachelor of singular habits and tastes,
who had written a book which proved a failure, and who left this volume to
appear posthumously. He had been in the habit of giving an account to
himself of the characters he met with, and he begins his book by describing
his own weaknesses. He classes himself as one of the blunderers he would
portray, as having the faults and foibles he finds in others. Expressively
the author says, "If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I
cannot escape being compromised." This may be taken as the sentiment of
George Eliot herself; and it is she who really speaks in these words
concerning the satirical criticisms of those she describes:

If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your
labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous
adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen
part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately
I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is t