ual intercourse and mutual
dependence, is more and more becoming (so to speak) one Parish; the
Parishioners of which being, as we ourselves are, in immense majority
peaceable hard-working people, could, if they were moderately well
guided, have almost no disposition to quarrel. Their economic interests
are one, "To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest;" their
faith, any _religious_ faith they have, is one, "To annihilate shams--by
all methods, street-barricades included." Why should they quarrel?
The Czar of Russia, in the Eastern parts of the Parish, may have other
notions; but he knows too well he must keep them to himself. He, if
he meddled with the Western parts, and attempted anywhere to crush or
disturb that sacred Democratic Faith of theirs, is aware there would
rise from a hundred and fifty million human throats such a _Hymn of the
Marseillaise_ as was never heard before; and England, France, Germany,
Poland, Hungary, and the Nine Kingdoms, hurling themselves upon him in
never-imagined fire of vengeance, would swiftly reduce his Russia and
him to a strange situation! Wherefore he forbears,--and being a person
of some sense, will long forbear. In spite of editorial prophecy, the
Czar of Russia does not disturb our night's rest. And with the other
parts of the Parish our dreams and our thoughts are of anything but of
fighting, or of the smallest need to fight.
For keeping of the peace, a thing highly desirable to us, we strive to
be grateful to your Lordship. Intelligible to us, also, your Lordship's
reluctance to get out of the old routine. But we beg to say farther,
that peace by itself has no feet to stand upon, and would not suit us
even if it had. Keeping of the peace is the function of a policeman, and
but a small fraction of that of any Government, King or Chief of men.
Are not all men bound, and the Chief of men in the name of all, to do
properly this: To see, so far as human effort under pain of eternal
reprobation can, God's Kingdom incessantly advancing here below, and His
will done on Earth as it is in Heaven? On Sundays your Lordship knows
this well; forgot it not on week-days. I assure you it is forevermore a
fact. That is the immense divine and never-ending task which is laid on
every man, and with unspeakable increase of emphasis on every Government
or Commonwealth of men. Your Lordship, that is the basis upon which
peace and all else depends! That basis once well lost, there is no p
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