the power of refusing to bury the children of Baptists. Still, our civilisation is not really advanced by any such measure as the Burials Bill; nay, in so far as readings from Eliza Cook are encouraged to produce themselves in public, and to pass themselves off as equivalent to readings from Milton, it is retarded.

Therefore do not let Liberal statesmen estimate the so-called Liberal measures, many of them, which they may be called upon to recommend now, at more than they are worth, or suppose that by recommending them they at all remedy their shortcomings in the past;-shortcomings which consist in their having taken an incomplete view of the life of the community and of its needs, and in having done little or nothing for the need of intellect and knowledge, and for the need of beauty, and for the need of manners, but having thought it enough to work for political liberty and free trade, for the need of expansion.

Nay, but even for the need of expansion our Liberal statesmen have not worked adequately. Doubtless the need of expansion in men suffers a defeat when they are over-tutored, over-governed, sat upon, as we say, by authority military or civil. From such a defeat of our instinct for expansion, political liberty saves us Englishmen ; and Liberal statesmen have worked for political liberty. But the need of expansion suffers a defeat, also, wherever there is an immense inequality of conditions and property; such inequality inevitably depresses and degrades the inferior masses. And whenever any great need of human nature suffers defeat, then the nation in which the defeat happens finds difficulties befalling it from that cause; nay, and the victories of other great needs do not compensate for the defeat of one. Germany, where the need for intellect and science is well cared for, where the sense of conduct

is strong, has neither liberty nor equality; the instinct for expansion suffers there signal defeat. Hence the difficulties of Germany. France has

liberty and equality, the instinct for expansion is victorious there; but how greatly does the need for conduct suffer defeat! and hence the difficulties of France. We English people have, deep and strong, the sense of conduct, and we have half of the instinct for expansion fully satisfied;-that is to say, we have admirable political liberty, and we have free trade. But we have inequality rampant, and hence arise many of our difficulties.

For in honest truth our present state, as I have elsewhere said, may without any great injustice be summed up thus: that we have an upper class materialised, a middle class vulgarised, a lower class brutalised. And this we owe to our inequality. For, if Lord Derby would think of it, he is himself at Knowsley quite as tremendous a personage, over against St. Helens, as the emperors and grand dukes and archdukes who fill him with horror. And though he himself may be one of the humane few who emerge in all classes, and may have escaped being materialised, yet still, owing to his tremendousness, the middle class of St. Helens is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised; and the lower class, again, is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised. And some who fill the place which he now fills are certain to be, some of them, materialised ;-like his greatgrandfather, for instance, whose cock-fights, as it is said, are still remembered with gratitude and love by old men in Preston. And he himself, being so able and acute as he is, would never, if he were not in a false position and compelled by it to use unreal language, he would never talk so much to his hearers, in the towns of the north, about their being

an

intelligent, keen-witted, critical, and well-to-do population;" but he would reproach them, though kindly and mildly, for having made St. Helens and places like it, and he would exhort them to civilise themselves,

But of inequality, as a defeat to the instinct in the community for expansion, and as a sure cause of trouble, Liberal statesmen are very shy to speak. And in Ireland, where inequality and the system of great estates produces, owing to differences of religion, and to absenteeism, and to the ways of personages such as the late Lord Leitrim, even more tremendous, perhaps, than an emperor or an archduke, and to the whole history of the country and character of the people,—in Ireland, I say, where inequality produces, owing to all these, more pressing and evident troubles than in England, and is the second cause of our difficulties with the Irish, as the habit of governing them in deference to British middle-class prejudices is the first,-in Ireland Liberal statesmen never look the thing fairly in the face, or apply a real remedy, but invent palliatives like the Irish Land Act, which do not go to the root of the evil, but which unsettle men's notions as to the constitutive characters of property, making. these characters something quite different in one place from what they are in another. And in England, where inequality and the system of great estates produces trouble too, though not trouble so glaring as in Ireland, in England Liberal statesmen shrink even more from looking the thing in the face, and apply little palliatives; and even for these little palliatives they allege reasons which are extremely questionable, such as that each child has a natural right to his equal share of his father's property, or that land in the hands of many owners will certainly produce more than in the hands of few.

And the true and simple reason against inequality they avert their eyes from, as if it were a Medusa ; -the reason, namely, that inequality, in a society like ours, sooner or later inevitably materialises the upper class, vulgarises the middle class, brutalises the lower class.

Not until this need to which they appeal, the need in man for expansion, is better understood by Liberal statesmen, is understood to include equality as well as political liberty and free trade,-and is cared for by them, yet cared for not singly and exorbitantly, but in union and proportion with the progress of man in conduct, and his growth in intellect and knowledge, and his nearer approach to beauty and manners,—will Liberal governments be secure. But when Liberal statesmen have learned to care for all these together, and to go on unto perfection or true civilisation, then at last they will be professing and practising the true and noble science of politics and the true and noble science of economics, instead of, as now, semblances only of these sciences, or at best fragments of them. And then will come at last the extinction or the conversion of the Tories, the restitution of all things, the reign of the Liberal saints. But meanwhile, so long as the Liberals do only as they have done hitherto, they will not permanently satisfy the community; but the Tories will again, from time to time, be tried,-tried and found wanting. And we, who study to be quiet, and to keep our temper and our tongue under control, shall 、 continue to speak of the principles of our two great political parties much as we do now; while clearheaded, but rough, impatient, and angry men, like Cobbett, will call them the principles of Pratt, the principles of Yorke.

V.

A SPEECH AT ETON.1

THE philosopher Epictetus, who had a school at Nicopolis in Epirus at the end of the first century of our era, thus apostrophises a young gentleman whom he supposes to be applying to him for education :

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Young sir, at home you have been at fisticuffs with the man-servant, you have turned the house upside down, you have been a nuisance to the neighbours; and do you come here with the composed face of a sage, and mean to sit in judgment upon the lesson, and to criticise my want of point? You have come in here with envy and chagrin in your heart, humiliated at not getting your allowance paid you from home; and you sit with your mind full, in the intervals of the lecture, of how your father behaves to you, and how your brother. What are the people down at home saying about me?-They are thinking: Now he is getting on! they are saying: He will come home a walking dictionary!-Yes, and I should like to go home a walking dictionary; but then there is a deal of work required, and nobody sends me anything, and the bathing here at Nicopolis is dirty and nasty; things are all bad at home, and all bad here." Nobody can say that the bathing at Eton is dirty

1 Address delivered to the Eton Literary Society.