Still further. I think, that, having made out its scheme of thought, your mind soon contracts a positive demand _even for the evil conditions_ which, in your estimation, made that scheme necessary. To illustrate. A man is roused at night, and sent flying for a physician in some sudden and terrible emergency. He returns, broken-winded, to learn that it was altogether a false alarm. It is quite possible that his first emotion, on receiving this intelligence, will not be pleasure, but indignation; he may feel that somebody ought to _be_ sick, since he has been at such pains. Pardon me, if I think your position not wholly dissimilar. It seems to me to have become an imperative requisition of your mind that nine-tenths of mankind should be fools. They _must_ be so; else you have no place for them in your system, and know not what to do with them. As fools, you have full arrangements made for their accommodation. Some hero, some born ruler of men, is to come forth (out of your books) and reduce them to obedience, and lord it over them in a most useful manner. But if they will not be fools, if they contumaciously refuse to be fools, they disturb the necessary conditions of kingship, and, of course, deserve much reprobation. I do not, therefore, feel myself unjust to you in saying, that, the better the American people behave, _in consistency with their political traditions and customary modes of thought_, the less you are able to be pleased with them. If they demean themselves as fools and incapables, (as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your mill-doors and grumble for want of toll,--as in the nutshell-epic aforesaid.
Well, there are many foolish and some wise, and I, for one, could heartily wish both classes more justly placed; for he who styles me an extreme intrepid democrat pays me a compliment to which I have no claim. While, then, by "kingship" you meant something human and noble, while I could deem the command you coveted for strong and wise men to be somewhat which should _lift the weak and unwise above the range of their own force and intelligence_, I held your prophesying in high esteem, and readily pardoned any excesses of expression into which your prophetic _afflatus_ (being Scotch) might betray you.