to the following, or a much finer effect?

_Speech of the British Prime-Minister to the floods of Irish and other
Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary, and the
general assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the Pauper Populations of these
Realms_.

"Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you, criminal many of you, miserable
all; the sight of you fills me with astonishment and despair. What to
do with you I know not; long have I been meditating, and it is hard to
tell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count: so many of you
fallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to
think, every new unit that falls is _loading_ so much more the chain
that drags the others over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted
millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day. They hang
there on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselves down, holding
on with all their strength; but falling, falling one after another; and
the chain is getting _heavy_, so that ever more fall; and who at last
will stand? What to do with you? The question, What to do with you?
especially since the potato died, is like to break my heart!

"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered, and now
know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam abroad in this
unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices, and loading ever heavier
the fatal _chain_ upon those who might be able to stand; that this
of locking you up in temporary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, and
subsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth again on fresh
roamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil;--that
this is _not_ the plan; and that it never was, or could out of England
have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!

"Vagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, all this that has been sung and
spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement, emancipation, freedom,
suffrage, civil and religious liberty over the world, is little other
than sad temporary jargon, brought upon us by a stern necessity,--but
now ordered by a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad
temporary jargon, I say: made up of sense and nonsense,--sense in small
quantities, and nonsense in very large;--and, if taken for the whole
or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than fatal infinite
nonsense eternally _untrue_. All men, I think, will soon have to quit
this, to consider this as