Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
Of the Foreign Office, in its reformed state, we have not much to say.
Abolition of imaginary work, and replacement of it by real, is on all
hands understood to be very urgent there. Large needless expenditures
of money, immeasurable ditto of hypocrisy and grimace; embassies,
protocols, worlds of extinct traditions, empty pedantries, foul
cobwebs:--but we will by no means apply the "live coal" of our witty
friend; the Foreign Office will repent, and not be driven to suicide! A
truer time will come for the Continental Nations too: Authorities based
on truth, and on the silent or spoken Worship of Human Nobleness,
will again get themselves established there; all Sham-Authorities, and
consequent Real-Anarchies based on universal suffrage and the Gospel
according to George Sand, being put away; and noble action, heroic
new-developments of human faculty and industry, and blessed fruit as
of Paradise getting itself conquered from the waste battle-field of
the chaotic elements, will once more, there as here, begin to show
themselves.
When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of _their_
Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternal
facts again, our Foreign Office may again have extensive concerns with
them. And at all times, and even now, there will remain the question to
be sincerely put and wisely answered, What essential concern _has_ the
British Nation with them and their enterprises? Any concern at all,
except that of handsomely keeping apart from them? If so, what are
the methods of best managing it?--At present, as was said, while Red
Republic but clashes with foul Bureaucracy; and Nations, sunk in
blind ignavia, demand a universal-suffrage Parliament to heal their
wretchedness; and wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle with
Sham-Kingship and extinct or galvanized Catholicism; and in the Cave of
the Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled against
each other,--our English interest in the controversy, however huge said
controversy grow, is quite trifling; we have only in a handsome manner
to say to it: "Tumble and rage along, ye rotten waifs and wrecks;
clash and collide as seems fittest to you; and smite each other into
annihilation at your own good pleasure. In that huge conflict, dismal
but unavoidable, we, thanks to our heroic ancestors, having got so far
ahead of you, have now no interest at all. Our decided notion is, the
dead ought to bury their dead in such a case: and so we have the
honor to be, with distinguished consideration, your entirely
devoted,--FLIMNAP, SEC. FOREIGN DEPARTMENT."--I really think Flimnap,
till truer times come, ought to treat much of his work in this way:
cautious to give offence to his neighbors; resolute not to concern
himself in any of their self-annihilating operations whatsoever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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