I shall of course observe the strictest silence, at present, in
reference to your resolutions. It will be a most acceptable occupation
to me to go over them with you, and I have not a doubt of their
producing a strong effect out of doors.
There is nothing in the present time at once so galling and so alarming
to me as the alienation of the people from their own public affairs. I
have no difficulty in understanding it. They have had so little to do
with the game through all these years of Parliamentary Reform, that they
have sullenly laid down their cards, and taken to looking on. The
players who are left at the table do not see beyond it, conceive that
gain and loss and all the interest of the play are in their hands, and
will never be wiser until they and the table and the lights and the
money are all overturned together. And I believe the discontent to be so
much the worse for smouldering, instead of blazing openly, that it is
extremely like the general mind of France before the breaking out of the
first Revolution, and is in danger of being turned by any one of a
thousand accidents--a bad harvest--the last strain too much of
aristocratic insolence or incapacity--a defeat abroad--a mere chance at
home--with such a devil of a conflagration as never has been beheld
since.
Meanwhile, all our English tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other
manifestations of accursed gentility--to say nothing of the Lord knows
who's defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty
men--ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every day, the disgusted
millions with this unnatural gloom are confirmed and hardened in the
very worst of moods. Finally, round all this is an atmosphere of
poverty, hunger, and ignorant desperation, of the mere existence of
which perhaps not one man in a thousand of those not actually enveloped
in it, through the whole extent of this country, has the least idea.
It seems to me an absolute impossibility to direct the spirit of the
people at this pass until it shows itself. If they begin to bestir
themselves in the vigorous national manner; if they would appear in
political reunion, array themselves peacefully but in vast numbers
against a system that they know to be rotten altogether, make themselves
heard like the sea all round this island, I for one should be in such a
movement heart and soul, and should think it a duty of the plainest kind
to go along with it, and try to guide it by all possible means. But you
can no more help a people who do not help themselves than you can help
a man who does not help himself. And until the people can be got up from
the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the advanced state of their
disease, I know of nothing that can be done beyond keeping their wrongs
continually before them.
I shall hope to see you soon after you come back. Your speeches at
Aberdeen are most admirable, manful, and earnest. I would have such
speeches at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and among all
sorts and conditions of men; up in the very balloons, and down in the
very diving-bells.
Ever, cordially yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]