As When The Farmer Has
Reached The End Of The Furrow And Looks Back, He Can Tell Best
Where The Pressed Earth Shines Most.
To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state
of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any
existence whatever.
It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant
to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the truth from such
lean material is like making sugar from linen rags, when
sugar-cane may be had. Generally speaking, the political news,
whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-day for the next
ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in society
have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that
our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the
country, and I might attend. Most events recorded in history are
more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and
moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes
the trouble to calculate.
But will the government never be so well administered, inquired
one, that we private men shall hear nothing about it? "The king
answered: At all events, I require a prudent and able man, who
is capable of managing the state affairs of my kingdom. The
ex-minister said: 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! if it knows no better I will not
blame it. If it cannot live but by these means, I can. I do not
wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in
holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better
than herself in these respects. - As for Massachusetts, that huge
she Briareus, Argus and Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to watch
the Heifer of the Constitution and the Golden Fleece, we would
not warrant our respect for her, like some compositions, to
preserve its qualities through all weathers.
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