Wilfully and against their will,these high units of mankind were cheats,then;and the low millions who believed in them were dupes,--a kind of inverse cheats,too,or they would have believed in them so long.A universal Bankruptcy of Imposture ;that may be the brief definition of it.Imposture everywhere declared once more to be contrary to Nature;ody will change its word into an act any farther:--fallen insolvent;unable to keep its head up by these false pretences,or make its pot boil any more for the present!A more scandalous phee,wide as Europe,never afflicted the face of the sun.Bankruptcy everywhere;foul iginy,and the abomination of desolation,in all high places:odious to look upon,as the carnage of a battle-field on the morrow morning;--a massacre of the inents;we can call it a massacre of the inents;but a universal tumbling of Impostors and of Impostures into the street!--Such a spectacle,can we call it joyful?There is a joy in it,to the wise man too;yes,but a joy full of awe,and as it were sadder than any sorrow,--like the vision of immortality,unattainable except through death and the grave!And yet who would ,in his heart of hearts,feel piously thankful that Imposture has fallen bankrupt?By all means let it fall bankrupt;in the name of God let it do so,with whatever misery to itself and to all of us.Imposture,be it kn then,--kn it must and shall be,--is hateful,unendurable to God and man.
Let it understand this everywhere;and swiftly make ready for departure,wherever it yet lingers;and let it learn never to return,if possible!The eternal voices,very audibly again,are speaking to proclaim this message,from side to side of the world.a very cheering message,but a very indispensable one.
Alas,it is sad egh that Anarchy is here;that we are permitted to regret its being here,--for who that had,for this divine Universe,an eye which was human at all,could wish that Shams of any kind,especially that Sham-Kings should continue?
At all costs,it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease .Good Heavens,to what depths have we got,when this to many a man seems strange!Yet strange to many a man it does seem;and to many a solid Englishman,wholesomely digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes,it seems strange exceedingly;a mad igant ion,quite heterodox,and big with mere ruin.He has been used to decent forms long since fallen empty of meaning,to plausible modes,solemnities grown ceremonial,--what you in your icolast humor call shams,all his life long;never heard that there was any harm in them,that there was any getting on without them.Did cotton spin itself,beef grow,and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West,quite comfortably by the side of shams?Kings reigned,what they were pleased to call reigning;lawyers pleaded,bishops preached,and hoable members perorated;and to crown the whole,as if it were all real and sham there,did scrip continue salable,and the banker pay in bullion,or paper with a metallic basis?"The greatest sham,I have always thought,is he that would destroy shams."Even so.To such depth have I ,the poor king person of this epoch,got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity,and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood!For never till in quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forth among the sons of Adam;never before did the creature called man believe generally in his heart that lies were the rule in this Earth;that in deliberate long-established lying could there be help or salvation for him,could there be at length other than hindrance and destruction for him.O Heavyside,my solid friend,this is the sorrow of sorrows:what on earth can become of us till this accursed enchantment,the general summary and consecration of delusions,be cast forth from the heart and life of one and all!Cast forth it will be;it must,or we are tending,at all moments,whitherward I do like to name.
Alas,and the casting of it out,to what heights and what depths will it lead us,in the sad universe mostly of lies and shams and hollow phantasms (grown very ghastly ),in which,as in a safe home,we have lived this century or two!To heights and depths of social and individual divorce from delusions,--of "reform"in right sacred earnest,of indispensable amendment,and stern sorrowful abrogation and order to depart,--such as can well be spoken at present;as dare scarcely be thought at present;which nevertheless are very inevitable,and perhaps rather imminent several of them!Truly we have a heavy task of work before us;and there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon it,before it tumble into an inextricable mass,in which there will be working,but only suffering and hopelessly perishing!
Or perhaps Democracy,which we annce as come,will itself manage it?Democracy,once modelled into suffrages,furnished with ballot-boxes and such like,will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real,and make a new blessed world of us by and by?--To the great mass of men,I am aware,the matter presents itself quite on this hopeful side.
Democracy they consider to be a kind of "Government."The old model,formed long since,and brought to perfection in England two hundred years ago,has proclaimed itself to all Nations as the new healing for every woe:"Set up a Parliament,"the Nations everywhere say,when the old King is detected to be a Sham-King,and hunted out or ;"set up a Parliament;let us have suffrages,universal suffrages;and all either at once or by due degrees will be right,and a real Millennium come!"Such is their way of construing the matter.
