seat in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin breeches of yours, but by taking off your hats to the potboy. Pretty classical statues you will make, Coriolanuses of the nineteenth century, humbly promising, not to your people gifts of corn, but to your potboys, stealthy sale of adulterated beer! Obedience!—you dare not so much as utter the word, whether to potboy, or any other sort of boy, it seems, lately; and the half of you still calling themselves Lords, Marquises, Sirs, and other such ancient names, which—though omniscient Mr. Buckle says they and their heraldry are nought—some little prestige lingers about still. You yourselves, what do you yet mean by them—Lords of what?—Herrs, Signors, Dukes of what?—of whom? Do you mean merely, when you go to the root of the matter, that you sponge on the British farmer for your living, and are strong-bodied paupers compelling your dole? To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force in you. Heaven keep it in you; for, as I have said, it will be tried, and soon; and you would even yourselves see what was coming, but that in your hearts—not from cowardice, but from shame,—you are not sure whether you will be ready to fight for your dole; and would fain persuade yourselves it will still be given, you for form’s sake, or pity’s. No, my lords and gentlemen,—you won it at the lance’s point, and must so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if still you may. No otherwise. You won ‘it,’ I say,—your dole,—as matters now stand. But perhaps, as matters used to stand, something else. As receivers of alms, you will find there is no fight in you. No beggar, nor herd of beggars, can fortify so very wide circumference of dish. And the real secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the clubs of Sempach, is—“that villanous saltpetre”—you think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the fruitless spiculæ. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been fighting these three hundred years for what you could get, instead of what you could give. You were ravenous enough in rapine in the olden times; [52] but you lived fearlessly and innocently by it, because, essentially, you wanted money and food to give,—not to consume; to maintain your followers with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, invariably, by knights who were content all their lives with their horse and armour and daily bread. Your kings, of true power, never desired for themselves more,—down to the last of them, Friedrich. What they did desire was strength of manhood round them, and, in their own hands, the power of largesse.