Such,from sad personal experience and credited prevailing rumor,is the exoteric public conviction about these sublime establishments in Downing Street and the neighborhood,the esoteric mysteries of which are indeed still held sacred by the initiated,but believed by the world to be mere Dalai-Lama pills,manufactured let refined lips hint how,and quite un salvatory to mankind.Every one may remark what a hope animates the eyes of any circle,when it is reported or even confidently asserted,that Sir Robert Peel has in his mind privately resolved to go,one day,into that stable of King Augeas,which appalls human hearts,so rich is it,high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years;and Hercules-like to load a thousand night-wagons from it,and turn running water into it,and swash and shovel at it,and never leave it till the antique pavement,and real basis of the matter,show itself clean again!In any intelligent circle such a rumor,like the first break of day to men in darkness,enlightens all eyes;and each says devoutly,"Faxitis ,O ye righteous Powers that have pity on us!All England grateful,with kindling looks,will rise in the rear of him,and from its deepest heart bid him good speed!"For it is universally felt that some esoteric man,well acquainted with the mysteries and properties good and evil of the administrative stable,is the fittest to reform it,nay can alone reform it otherwise than by sheer violence and destruction,which is a way we would avoid;that in fact Sir Robert Peel is,at present,the one likely or possible man to reform it.And secondly it is felt that "reform"in that Downing-Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were worth all others;that those administrative establishments in Downing Street are really the Government of this huge ungoverned Empire;that to clean out the dead pedantries,unveracities,indolent soment impotences,and accumulated dung-mountains there,is the beginning of all practical good whatsoever.Yes,get down once again to the actual pavement of that;ascertain what the thing is,and was before dung accumulated in it;and what it should and may,and must,for the life's sake of this Empire,henceforth become:here clearly lies the heart of the whole matter.Political reform,if this be reformed,is naught and a mere mockery.
What England wants,and will require to have,or sink in nameless anarchies,is a Reformed Parliament,meaning thereby a Parliament elected according to the six or the four or any other number of "points"and cunningly devised improvements in hustings mechanism,but a Reformed Executive or Sovereign Body of Rulers and Administrators,--some improved method,innumerable improvements in our poor blind methods,of getting hold of these a better Talking-Apparatus,the best conceivable Talking-Apparatus would do very little for us at present;--but an infinitely better Acting-Apparatus,the benefits of which would be invaluable and henceforth.The practical question puts itself with ever-increasing stringency to all English minds:Can we,by industry,energy,utmost expenditure of human ingenuity,and passionate invocation of the Heavens and Earth,get to attain some twelve or ten or six men to manage the affairs of this nation in Downing Street and the chief posts elsewhere,who are abler for the work than those we have been used to,this long while?For it is really a heroic work,and can be done by histrios,and dexterous talkers having the ho to be:it is a heavy and appalling work;and,at the starting of it especially,will require Herculean men;such mountains of pedant exuviae and obscene owl-droppings have accumulated in those regions,long the habitation of doleful creatures;the old pavements ,the natural facts and real essential functions of those establishments,have been seen by eyes for these two hundred years last past!Herculean men acquainted with the virtues of running water,and with the divine necessity of getting down to the clear pavements and old veracities;who tremble before amount of pedant exuviae,loudest shrieking of doleful creatures;who tremble only to live,themselves,like inane phantasms,and to leave their life as a paltry contribution to the guamountains,and as a divine eternal protest against them!
