Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/218

 all right,—may the lightning strike only their leaders!

“Again I ask you to consider the stacks of books which the printing-press distributes every year in the country! What a mass of printed sheets!—I mean your newspapers! Do you know, gentlemen, what gigantic tribute the nation pays for its enlightenment? If you only gave the nation enlightenment! Bah, here you place it on the throne as your sovereign,—just look here, I beg you,” he pointed to the National Gazette—“and if the people do not elect you, they are a lot of blind dullards. You excite their enthusiasm, which you ought to guard like gold, to a wild passion. A hundred times a year you strain their strength to shoot at an ephemeral target You throw them like a ball somewhere into the skies, and then let them drop again to the ground. You promise them paradise, and when they, when the people, come like spoiled children and begin to cry,