256 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



made the people independent of special leaders, and 

 secured the free and full expression of the popular 

 will and conscience. Any view of American politics, 

 based upon the failure of the suffrage always, or even 

 generally, to lift into power the ablest men, is partial 

 and unscientific. We can stand, and have stood any 

 amount of mediocrity in our appointed rulers ; and 

 perhaps in the ordinary course of events mediocrity 

 is the safest and best. We can no longer surrender 

 ourselves to great leaders, if we wanted to. Indeed 

 there is no longer a call for great leaders ; with the 

 appearance of the people upon the scene, the hero 

 must await his orders. How often in this country 

 have the people checked and corrected the folly and 

 wrong-headedness of their rulers. It is probably 

 true, as Carlyle says, that " the smallest item of hu- 

 man Slavery is the oppression of man by his Mock- 

 Superiors ; " but shall we accept the other side of the 

 proposition, that the grand problem is to find govern- 

 ment by our Real Superiors ? The grand problem is 

 rather to be superior to all government, and to pos- 

 sess a nationality that finally rests upon principles 

 quite beyond the fluctuations of ordinary politics. A 

 people possessed of the gift of Empire, like the Eng- 

 lish stock, both in Europe and in America, are in 

 our day beholden very little to their chosen rulers. 

 Otherwise the English nation would have been ex- 

 tinct long ago. 



" Human virtue," Carlyle wrote in 1850, " if we 

 went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The 



