The criterion, O Sire! of a wise and competent
man is, that he will not meddle with such like matters." Alas
that the ex-minister should have been so nearly right!
In my short experience of human life, the _outward_ obstacles,
if there were any such, have not been living men, but the
institutions of the dead. It is grateful to make one's way
through this latest generation as through dewy grass. Men are
as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.
"And round about good morrows fly,
As if day taught humanity."
Not being Reve of this Shire,
"The early pilgrim blithe he hailed,
That o'er the hills did stray,
And many an early husbandman,
That he met on the way"; -
thieves and robbers all, nevertheless. I have not so surely
foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway would come to disturb the
honest and simple commonwealth, as that some monster institution
would at length embrace and crush its free members in its scaly
folds; for it is not to be forgotten, that while the law holds
fast the thief and murderer, it lets itself go loose. When I
have not paid the tax which the State demanded for that
protection which I did not want, itself has robbed me; when I
have asserted the liberty it presumed to declare, itself has
imprisoned me. Poor creature!
