a thing pretty well achieved; and to look out
towards another thing much more needing achievement at the time that now
is.

"All men will have to quit it, I believe. But to you, my indigent
friends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived! To talk of
glorious self-government, of suffrages and hustings, and the fight
of freedom and such like, is a vain thing in your case. By all human
definitions and conceptions of the said fight of freedom, you for your
part have lost it, and can fight no more. Glorious self-government is
a glory not for you, not for Hodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No; I
say, No. You, for your part, have tried it, and _failed_. Left to walk
your own road, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, your short sight could
not descry the pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press has whirled you
hither and thither, regardless of your struggles and your shrieks; and
here at last you lie; fallen flat into the ditch, drowning there and
dying, unless the others that are still standing please to pick you
up. The others that still stand have their own difficulties, I can tell
you!--But you, by imperfect energy and redundant appetite, by doing too
little work and drinking too much beer, you (I bid you observe) have
proved that you cannot do it! You lie there plainly in the ditch. And
I am to pick you up again, on these mad terms; help you ever again, as
with our best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the gods
have made impossible? To load the fatal _chain_ with your perpetual
staggerings and sprawlings; and ever again load it, till we all lie
sprawling? My indigent incompetent friends, I will not! Know that,
whoever may be 'sons of freedom,' you for your part are not and cannot
be such. Not 'free' you, I think, whoever may be free. You palpably are
fallen captive,--_caitiff_, as they once named it:--you do, silently
but eloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that some genuine
command be taken of you.

"Yes, my indigent incompetent friends; some genuine practical command.
Such,--if I rightly interpret those mad Chartisms, Repeal Agitations,
Red Republics, and other delirious inarticulate howlings and bellowings
which all the populations of the world now utter, evidently cries of
pain on their and your part,--is the demand which you, Captives, make of
all men that are not Captive, but are still Free. Free men,--alas,
had you ever any notion who the free men were, who the not-free, the
incapable of fre