My humane friends,I perceive this same sacred glow of divine wrath,or authentic monition at first hand from God himself,to be the foundation for all Criminal Law,and Official horsehair-and-bombazine procedure against Scoundrels in this world.This first-hand gospel from the Eternities,imparted to every mortal,this is still,and will forever be,your sanction and commission for the punishment of human scoundrels.See well how you will translate this message from Heaven and the Eternities into a form suitable to this World and its Times.Let violence,haste,blind impetuous impulse,preside in executing it;the injured man,invincibly liable to fall into these,shall himself execute it:the whole world,in person of a Minister appointed for that end,and surrounded with the due solemnities and caveats,with bailiffs,apparitors,advocates,and the hushed expectation of all men,shall do it,as under the eye of God who made all men.How it shall be done?this is ever a vast question,involving immense considerations.Thus Edmund Burke saw,in the Two Houses of Parliament,with King,Constitution,and all manner of Civil-Lists,and Chancellors'wigs and Exchequer budgets,only the "method of getting twelve just men put into a jury-box:"that,in Burke's view,was the summary of what they were all meant for.How the judge will do it?Yes,indeed:--but let him see well that he does do it:for it is a thing that must by means be left undone!A sacred gospel from the Highest:to be smothered under horsehair and bombazine,or drowned in platform froth,or in any wise omitted or neglected,without the most alarming penalties to all concerned!
Neglect to treat the hero as hero,the penalties--which are inevitable too,and terrible to think of,as your Hebrew friends can tell you--may be some time in coming;they will only gradually come.all at once will your thirty thousand Needlewomen,your three million Paupers,your Connaught fallen into potential Cannibalism,and other fine consequences of the practice,come to light;--though come to light they will;and "Ou'clo'!"itself may be in store for you,if you persist steadily egh.But neglect to treat even your declared scoundrel as scoundrel,this is the last consummation of the process,the drop by which the cup runs over;the penalties of this,most alarming,extensive,and such as you little dream of,will straightway very rapidly come.Dim oblivion of Right and Wrong,among the masses of your population,will come;doubts as to Right and Wrong,indistinct ion that Right and Wrong are eternal,but accidental,and settled by uncertain votings and talkings,will come.Prurient influenza of Platform Benevolence,and "Paradise to All-and-sundry,"will come.In the general putrescence of your "religions,"as you call them,a strange new religion,named of Universal Love,with Sacraments mainly of--Divorce ,with Balzac,Sue and Company for Evangelists,and Madame Sand for Virgin,will come,--and results fast following therefrom which will astonish you very much!
"The terrible anarchies of these years,"says Crabbe,in his Radiator ,"are brought upon us by a necessity too visible.By the crime of Kings,--alas,yes;but by that of Peoples too.by the crime of one class,but by the fatal obscuration,and all but obliteration of the sense of Right and Wrong in the minds and practices of every class.What a scene in the drama of Universal History,this of ours!A world-wide loud bellow and bray of universal Misery;lowing ,with crushed maddened heart,its inarticulate prayer to Heaven:--very pardonable to me,and in some of its transcendent developments,as in the grand French Revolution,most respectable and ever-memorable.For Injustice reigns everywhere;and this murderous struggle for what they call 'Fraternity,'and so forth has a spice of eternal sense in it,though so terribly disfigured!Amalgam of sense and sense;eternal sense by the grain,and temporary sense by the square mile:as is the habit with poor sons of men.Which pardonable amalgam,however,if it be taken as the pure final sense,I must warn you and all creatures,is unpardonable,criminal,and fatal sense;--with which I,for one,will take care to concern myself!
