if the angel gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. they wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appear[108] with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at their clubs. what can we expect, then, when we have only poor, gallant, blundering men like kossuth, garibaldi, mazzini, and righteous causes do not always triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armor, god knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounging-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers?

but you who only want to have your heads set straight to take the right side, bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. if you can’t join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.