estion to be asked is even this, What
kind of man do you set over us? All questions are answered in the answer
to this. Another thing is worth attending to: No people or populace,
with never such ballot-boxes, can select such man for you; only the man
of worth can recognize worth in men;--to the commonplace man of no or
of little worth, you, unless you wish to be _mis_led, need not apply on
such an occasion. Those poor Tenpound Franchisers of yours, they are not
even in earnest; the poor sniffing sniggering Honorable Gentlemen they
send to Parliament are as little so. Tenpound Franchisers full of mere
beer and balderdash; Honorable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to an
Almack's series of evening parties, or big cockmain (battle of all the
cocks) very amusing to witness and bet upon: what can or could men in
that predicament ever do for you? Nay, if they were in life-and-death
earnest, what could it avail you in such a case? I tell you, a million
blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius,
or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his
qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of
time. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they should
understand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are,--this,
which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them.
Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally
say, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler and
wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee."

The question therefore arises, Whether, since reform of parliament and
such like have done so little in that respect, the problem might not
be with some hope attacked in the direct manner? Suppose all our
Institutions, and Public Methods of Procedure, to continue for the
present as they are; and suppose farther a Reform Premier, and the
English Nation once awakening under him to a due sense of the infinite
importance, nay the vital necessity there is of getting able and abler
men:--might not some heroic wisdom, and actual "ability" to do what must
be done, prove discoverable to said Premier; and so the indispensable
Heaven's-blessing descend to us from _above_, since none has yet
sprung from below? From above we shall have to try it; the other
is exhausted,--a hopeless method that! The utmost passion of the
house-inmates, ignorant of masonry and architecture, cannot av