Democracy,sure egh,is here;one ks how long it will keep hidden underground even in Russia;--and here in England,though we object to it resolutely in the form of street-barricades and insurrectionary pikes,and decidedly will open doors to it on those terms,the tramp of its million feet is on all streets and thoroughfares,the sound of its bewildered thousand-fold voice is in all writings and speakings,in all thinkings and modes and activities of men:the soul that does ,with hope or terror,discern it,is the one we address on this occasion.
What is Democracy;this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies,which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days?There lies the question for us.Whence comes it,this universal big black Democracy;whither tends it;what is the meaning of it?A meaning it must have,or it would be here.
If we can find the right meaning of it,we may,wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling,still hope to live in the midst of it;if we can find the right meaning,if we find only the wrong or meaning in it,to live will be possible!--The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned,in the name of the Giver of Wisdom,to make clear to itself,and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort,what the meaning of this universal revolt of the European Populations,which calls itself Democracy,and decides to continue permanent,may be.
Certainly it is a drama full of action,event fast following event;in which curiosity finds endless scope,and there are interests at stake,egh to rivet the attention of all men,simple and wise.Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices,gratulating,celebrating sky-high;in rhyme and prose anncement,more than plentiful,that the New Era,and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come.
Glorious and immortal people,sublime French citizens,heroic barricades;triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven!one of the inevitablest private miseries,to an earnest man in such circumstances,is this multitudis efflux of oratory and psalmody,from the universal foolish human throat;drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever,except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil,heavy-laden,long-eared age,and must resignedly bear your part in the same.The front wall of your wretched old crazy dwelling,long denced by you to purpose,having at last fairly folded itself over,and fallen prostrate into the street,the floors,as may happen,will still hang on by the mere beam-ends,and coherency of old carpentry,though in a sloping direction,and depend there till certain poor rusty nails and worm-eaten dovetailings give way:--but is it cheering,in such circumstances,that the whole household burst forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation,liberty and picturesqueness of position,and thank God that they have got a house to their mind?My dear household,cease singing and psalmodying;lay aside your fiddles,take out your work-implements,if you have any;for I can say with confidence the laws of gravitation are still active,and rusty nails,worm-eaten dovetailings,and secret coherency of old carpentry,are the best basis for a household!--In the lanes of Irish cities,I have heard say,the wretched people are sometimes found living,and perilously boiling their potatoes,on such swing-floors and inclined planes hanging on by the joist-ends;but I did hear that they sang very much in celebration of such lodging.they slid gently about,sat near the back wall,and perilously boiled their potatoes,in silence for most part!--High shouts of exultation,in every dialect,by every vehicle of speech and writing,rise from far and near over this last avatar of Democracy in 1848:and yet,to wise minds,the first aspect it presents seems rather to be one of boundless misery and sorrow.
What can be more miserable than this universal hunting out of the high dignitaries,solemn functionaries,and potent,grave and reverend signiors of the world;this stormful rising-up of the inarticulate dumb masses everywhere,against those who pretended to be speaking for them and guiding them?These guides,then,were mere blind men only pretending to see?These rulers were ruling at all;they had merely got on the attributes and clothes of rulers,and were surreptitiously drawing the wages,while the work remained undone?The Kings were Sham-Kings,play-acting as at Drury Lane;--and what were the people withal that took them for real?
It is probably the hugest disclosure of falsity in human things that was ever at one time made.These reverend Dignitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols and long-sounding long-admitted professions,were mere Impostors,then?a true thing they were doing,but a false thing.The story they told men was a cunningly devised fable;the gospels they preached to them were an account of man's real position in this world,but an incoherent fabrication,of dead ghosts and unborn shadows,of traditions,cants,indolences,cowardices,--a falsity of falsities,which at last ceases to stick together.
