God's Light, and the detestation
of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness, what method is there? No
method,--except even this, that we should each of us "pray" for it,
instead of praying for mere scrip and the like; that Heaven would please
to vouchsafe us each a little of it, one by one! As perhaps Heaven, in
its infinite bounty, by stern methods, gradually will? Perhaps Heaven
has mercy too in these sore plagues that are oppressing us; and means
to teach us reverence for Heroism and Human Intellect, by such baleful
experience of what issue Imbecility and Parliamentary Eloquence lead to?
Such reverence, I do hope, and even discover and observe, is silently
yet extensively going on among us even in these sad years. In which
small salutary fact there burns for us, in this black coil of universal
baseness fast becoming universal wretchedness, an inextinguishable
hope; far-off but sure, a divine "pillar of fire by night." Courage,
courage!--

Meanwhile, that our one reforming Statesman may have free command
of what Intellect there is among us, and room to try all means for
awakening and inviting ever more of it, there has one small Project
of Improvement been suggested; which finds a certain degree of favor
wherever I hear it talked of, and which seems to merit much more
consideration than it has yet received. Practical men themselves approve
of it hitherto, so far as it goes; the one objection being that the
world is not yet prepared to insist on it,--which of course the world
can never be, till once the world consider it, and in the first place
hear tell of it! I have, for my own part, a good opinion of this
project. The old unreformed Parliament of rotten boroughs _had_ one
advantage; but that is hereby, in a far more fruitful and effectual
manner, secured to the new.

The Proposal is, That Secretaries under and upper, that all manner of
changeable or permanent servants in the Government Offices shall
be selected without reference to their power of getting into
Parliament;--that, in short, the Queen shall have power of nominating
the half-dozen or half-score Officers of the Administration, whose
presence is thought necessary in Parliament, to official seats there,
without reference to any constituency but her own only, which of course
will mean her Prime Minister's. A very small encroachment on the present
constitution of Parliament; offering the minimum of change in present
methods, and I almost think a maximum in