, must begin by
admitting that: new street-barricades, and new anarchies, still more
scandalous if still less sanguinary, must return and again return, till
governing persons everywhere know and admit that. Democracy, it may be
said everywhere, is here:--for sixty years now, ever since the grand or
_First_ French Revolution, that fact has been terribly announced to all
the world; in message after message, some of them very terrible indeed;
and now at last all the world ought really to believe it. That the world
does believe it; that even Kings now as good as believe it, and know,
or with just terror surmise, that they are but temporary phantasm
Play-actors, and that Democracy is the grand, alarming, imminent and
indisputable Reality: this, among the scandalous phases we witnessed
in the last two years, is a phasis full of hope: a sign that we are
advancing closer and closer to the very Problem itself, which it will
behoove us to solve or die; that all fighting and campaigning and
coalitioning in regard to the _existence_ of the Problem, is hopeless
and superfluous henceforth. The gods have appointed it so; no Pitt, nor
body of Pitts or mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise. Democracy,
sure enough, is here; one knows not how long it will keep hidden
underground even in Russia;--and here in England, though we object to it
resolutely in the form of street-barricades and insurrectionary pikes,
and decidedly will not open doors to it on those terms, the tramp of
its million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares, the sound of its
bewildered thousand-fold voice is in all writings and speakings, in all
thinkings and modes and activities of men: the soul that does not now,
with hope or terror, discern it, is not the one we address on this
occasion.

What is Democracy; this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, which
is everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days? There
lies the question for us. Whence comes it, this universal big black
Democracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it? A meaning it
must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of
it, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still
hope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning,
if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not be
possible!--The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, in
the name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itsel