most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable three
halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls?
Solemn Bishops and high Dignitaries, _our_ divine "Pillars of Fire by
night," debating meanwhile, with their largest wigs and gravest look,
upon something they call "prevenient grace"? Alas, our noble men of
genius, Heaven's _real_ messengers to us, they also rendered nearly
futile by the wasteful time;--preappointed they everywhere, and
assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise in
Parliament," to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words,
for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to be
approved of by the gods! Our "Government," a highly "responsible"
one; responsible to no God that I can hear of, but to the twenty-seven
million _gods_ of the shilling gallery. A Government tumbling and
drifting on the whirlpools and mud-deluges, floating atop in a
conspicuous manner, no-whither,--like the carcass of a drowned ass.
Authentic _Chaos_ come up into this sunny Cosmos again; and all men
singing Gloria in _excelsis_ to it. In spirituals and temporals, in
field and workshop, from Manchester to Dorsetshire, from Lambeth Palace
to the Lanes of Whitechapel, wherever men meet and toil and traffic
together,--Anarchy, Anarchy; and only the street-constable (though with
ever-increasing difficulty) still maintaining himself in the middle of
it; that so, for one thing, this blessed exchange of slop-shirts for
the souls of women may transact itself in a peaceable manner!--I, for my
part, do profess myself in eternal opposition to this, and discern well
that universal Ruin has us in the wind, unless we can get out of this.
My friend Crabbe, in a late number of his _Intermittent Radiator_,
pertinently enough exclaims:--

"When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty, Voluntary
Principle, Dangers of Centralization, and the like? It is really getting
too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, the people cannot be taught
to read. British Liberty, shuddering to interfere with the rights of
capital, takes six or eight millions of money annually to feed the
idle laborer whom it dare not employ. For British Liberty we live over
poisonous cesspools, gully-drains, and detestable abominations; and
omnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself. British Liberty
produces--what? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, and apparently
little else at present