GOVERNMENT.
I wish some one would offer a prize—not of a hundred francs, but of a million, with crowns, medals and ribbons—for a good simple and intelligent definition of the word "Government."
What an immense service it would confer on society!
The Government! what is it? where is it? what does it do? what ought it to do? All we know is, that it is a mysterious personage; and, assuredly, it is the most solicited, the most tormented, the most overwhelmed, the most admired, the most accused, the most invoked, and the most provoked, of any personage in the world.
I have not the pleasure of knowing my reader, but I would stake ten to one, that for six months he has been making Utopias, and if so, that he is looking to Government for the realization of them.
And should the reader happen to be a lady, I have no doubt that she is sincerely desirous of seeing all the evils of suffering humanity remedied, and that she thinks this might easily be done, if Government would only undertake it.
But, alas! that poor unfortunate personage, like Figaro,[1] knows not to whom to listen, nor where to
- ↑ Central character in The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Guilty Mother by Pierre Beaumarchais. (Wikisource contributor note)
