, and defend the same, at their life's peril,
against all men and devils. This I do clearly believe to be the backbone
of all Future Society, as it has been of all Past; and that without it,
there is no Society possible in the world. And what a business _this_
will be, before it end in some degree of victory again, and whether the
time for shouts of triumph and tremendous cheers upon it is yet come, or
not yet by a great way, I perceive too well! A business to make us all
very serious indeed. A business not to be accomplished but by noble
manhood, and devout all-daring, all-enduring loyalty to Heaven, such as
fatally _sleeps_ at present,--such as is not _dead_ at present either,
unless the gods have doomed this world of theirs to die! A business
which long centuries of faithful travail and heroic agony, on the part
of all the noble that are born to us, will not end; and which to us, of
this "tremendous cheering" century, it were blessedness very great to
see successfully begun. Begun, tried by all manner of methods, if there
is one wise Statesman or man left among us, it verily must be;--begun,
successfully or unsuccessfully, we do hope to see it!

In all European countries, especially in England, one class of Captains
and commanders of men, recognizable as the beginning of a new real
and not imaginary "Aristocracy," has already in some measure developed
itself: the Captains of Industry;--happily the class who above all, or
at least first of all, are wanted in this time. In the doing of material
work, we have already men among us that can command bodies of men.
And surely, on the other hand, there is no lack of men needing to be
commanded: the sad class of brother-men whom we had to describe as
"Hodge's emancipated horses," reduced to roving famine,--this too has in
all countries developed itself; and, in fatal geometrical progression,
is ever more developing itself, with a rapidity which alarms every one.
On this ground, if not on all manner of other grounds, it may be truly
said, the "Organization of Labor" (_not_ organizable by the mad methods
tried hitherto) is the universal vital Problem of the world.

To bring these hordes of outcast captainless soldiers under due
captaincy? This is really the question of questions; on the answer
to which turns, among other things, the fate of all Governments,
constitutional and other,--the possibility of their continuing to exist,
or the impossibility. Captainless, uncommanded,