[The Warden by Anthony Trollope]@TWC D-Link book
The Warden

CHAPTER XIV
5/14

With what endless care, with what unsparing labour, do we not strive to get together for our great national council the men most fitting to compose it.

And how we fail! Parliament is always wrong: look at _The Jupiter_, and see how futile are their meetings, how vain their council, how needless all their trouble! With what pride do we regard our chief ministers, the great servants of state, the oligarchs of the nation on whose wisdom we lean, to whom we look for guidance in our difficulties! But what are they to the writers of _The Jupiter_?
They hold council together and with anxious thought painfully elaborate their country's good; but when all is done, _The Jupiter_ declares that all is naught.

Why should we look to Lord John Russell;--why should we regard Palmerston and Gladstone, when Tom Towers without a struggle can put us right?
Look at our generals, what faults they make; at our admirals, how inactive they are.

What money, honesty, and science can do, is done; and yet how badly are our troops brought together, fed, conveyed, clothed, armed, and managed.
The most excellent of our good men do their best to man our ships, with the assistance of all possible external appliances; but in vain.
All, all is wrong--alas! alas! Tom Towers, and he alone, knows all about it.

Why, oh why, ye earthly ministers, why have ye not followed more closely this heaven-sent messenger that is among us?
Were it not well for us in our ignorance that we confided all things to _The Jupiter_?
Would it not be wise in us to abandon useless talking, idle thinking, and profitless labour?
Away with majorities in the House of Commons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after much delay, with doubtful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity! Does not _The Jupiter_, coming forth daily with fifty thousand impressions full of unerring decision on every mortal subject, set all matters sufficiently at rest?
Is not Tom Towers here, able to guide us and willing?
Yes indeed, able and willing to guide all men in all things, so long as he is obeyed as autocrat should be obeyed,--with undoubting submission: only let not ungrateful ministers seek other colleagues than those whom Tom Towers may approve; let church and state, law and physic, commerce and agriculture, the arts of war, and the arts of peace, all listen and obey, and all will be made perfect.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books