266 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



that cannot be suppressed or annulled. There is not 

 a parish, township, or community, little or big, in this 

 country or in England, that is not finally governed, 

 shaped, directed, built up by what of wisdom there 

 is in it. All the leading industries and enterprises 

 gravitate naturally to the hands best able to control 

 them. The wise furnish employment for the unwise, 

 capital flows to capital hands as surely as water seeks 

 water. 



" Winds blow and waters roll 

 Strength to the brave." 



There never is and never can be any government 

 but by the wisest. In all nations and communities 

 the law of nature finally prevails. If there is no 

 wisdom in the people there will be none in their 

 rulers ; the virtue and intelligence of the representa- 

 tive will not be essentially different from that of 

 his constituents. The dependence of the foolish, the 

 thriftless, the improvident, upon his natural master 

 and director, for food, employment, for life itself, is 

 just as real to-day in America as it was in the old 

 feudal or patriarchal times. The relation between 

 the two is not so obvious, so intimate, so voluntary, 

 but it is just as vital and essential. How shall we 

 know the wise man unless he makes himself felt, or 

 seen, or heard ? How shall we know the master un- 

 less he masters us ? Is there any danger that the real 

 captains will not step to the front, and that we shall 

 not know them when they do ? Shall we not know 

 a Luther, a Cromwell, a Franklin, a Washington ? 



