final arbiter of the whole case is human nature. Statesmanship and Parliaments must try as a point of duty, and of reason, and of conscience, and of philosophy, to represent men at their collective best, and to avoid, in public action, as much of the error of mankind as is collectively avoidable. Am I right in thinking that Professor MacCunn's book has this fault-that it too readily accepts unimproved human nature as a standard and force in the ethics of citizenship? Am I entitled to insist in politics, as in other matters, that in the domain of ethics unimproved, unperfected human nature has little if any prerogative? I hold that I am; and that only thus can we hope to reach what Baron de Bunsen set forth in one of his letters as an ideal of public as well as of private well-being, the breaking down of the rule of the dark despot Self, and the evolving of the reality of freedom.

We should shrink from basing duty-even the duty of kindness, even the duty of living for high and unseen ends-on anything but inherent rightness. Professor MacCunn says that only Religion can habituate the ordinary citizen to such moral achievements. He deprecates any scoffing at the State as an object of devotion, and admits that it would be rash to set limits to that sentiment so directed. But in a passage all too eloquent for philosophy he exclaims, "Our thoughts go back to the God of our Puritan and Covenanting forefathers, the God of Knox and of Cromwell, and to the things that were done in His name; and we wonder how the mastery of that awful Presence over the human heart and conscience is to be won by the noblest State that is likely to be fashioned by human hands and minds." None of us is likely to be insensible to the ringing appeal that vibrates in such words. But I demur to this division of the secular and the sacred. The theology of Knox and Cromwell is

likely to be no more and no less God-made than the perfections of a noble State; and though philosophy may record that civic duty has been done under theological impulses, philosophy should assert the sufficiency of civic obligations for the performance of civic duty. Granted that religion is a potent assistance to all performance of duty; granted that there are minds which only religion will work up to any consciousness of high duty; it is nevertheless the function of an ethical teacher to insist on ethical sanctions, and to argue for their being brought into general regard, and for their being recognised as of sufficient power.

Take again the obligation of being kind and philosophic. Professor MacCunn quotes the "Brother, Brother," passage from Sartor Resartus, which I think Mr. Brett took for the motto of his Stonebreaker, and finds in it the doctrine that if we apprehend "the reality and indestructibility of the relation of man to God we must needs look upon our fellow men with a love and a pity such as are due only to beings in whom the Divine spirit, through which all are one, is for ever doomed to the sorrowful, heroic, struggles of our strangely obstructed partially unintelligible life on earth." He calls this "Fraternity standing upon something more than sentiment," and pooh, poohs those "whose language is at times such as to suggest that to be faithful to the idea of Fraternity we must love the distant savage even as we love our own flesh and blood." He even states that it is just "the narrower ties dividing the allegiance" to Humanity as a whole that "most surely foster the wider affections." If this is so, as a matter of fact, it is valeat quantum a fit matter for philosophical observation; but the moral doctrine of it is not fit to be laid down as an ethical obligation. The good man will be as truly kind to a cat as to a

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Christian. He cannot help being kind. It is his natural and trained desire, and he knows it to be right. He cannot get behind that. He wants no other reason for it. If he suddenly learnt that one half of his fellowmen were of diabolic origin it would not make the slightest difference in his behaviour to them. The springs of benevolence, to have virtue, must rise in ourselves without collateral stimulus-even if we acknowledge that the stimulus of common Divine parentage is not irrelevant. There is a very beautiful subtlety in the parable of the Good Samaritan. That parable is a reply to the question “Who is my neighbour?" According to the natural and expected structure of the argument proof ought to be given that the man who fell among robbers was neighbour to those who passed him by, and to the good Samaritan who succoured him. But no! Our Saviour asked, after telling the lovely story, "Which of the three-the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan-was neighbour to him who fell among robbers ?" The governing principle suddenly and unexpectedly-with a sort of parabolic wit-turns out to be not that the injured man was the neighbour of the others, but that one of these others, and not the other two, was neighbourly to him.

The great value of Professor MacCunn's work—which all-outweighing merit I am heartily glad to recognise-is its hopeful tone as to the future of Democracy. Let not this be checked, either by the seemingly contradictory probabilities which the philosopher has to recognise or by the somewhat confusing enrichment of his pages by quotations from all and sundry authorities.

As to the latter peculiarity, I submit that the citation of things great men have said in politics, though more interesting, perhaps, than the old blind citation of Scripture texts in religion, is liable to be quite as vexatious and

misleading. In every case before admitting the force of a quotation you need to have before you, and you need to be able to pronounce upon the context, the facts of the time, the precision of the analogy, the competence of the speaker or writer, the quality of temporariness or permanency in his utterance. Let us boldly tackle the greatest example: You can prove almost any doctrine from Burke; because almost every doctrine is in some sort true; and because Burke saw everything, and at some time or other said everything. But all this is against his being quoted as an authority. He is an incomparable illustrator and elucidator, for the consideration of mankind, of the moral facts of life and government. But one is often wrong in any given case if one allows Burke to have more than a qualifying or suspensory effect on the judgment. As in an ideal jurisprudence so in a perfect choice of opinion and action, previous decisions should only illuminate the issue, not decree the conclusion.

As to the other drawback-the frank and serious recognition of difficulties-this is greatly to Professor MacCunn's honour, and does not militate in the least against the good hopes which the balance of his argument encourages. Democracy will certainly never have an unchequered existence. It will always be liable, like everything else human, to all the errors and unhappinesses, which may come either because those who are in it and those who have the conduct of it do not make the most of their advantageous circumstances, or because they find disadvantageous circumstances too strong for them.

There is no royal road to be counted upon, anywhither. Those who seek royal roads are apt to arrive at very unroyal destinations.

Baron de Bunsen, whom I have already quoted, said in another letter, "We have prophets: therefore we have a

future." It is a fine epigram. Professor MacCunn is one of our prophets. He foretels a good future for Democracy because under Democracy can be secured the greatest amount of cooperative service with the least amount of irretrievable disaster that men can provide for themselves under any system of government.

As time goes on, and as the scene opens, he and other hopeful seeing men will discern in clearer detail the course of future progress. Most instructive is it, and it should be most stimulating, to reflect how continually that great vista is opening, and how inexorably that man is shut out from human affairs who closes his eyes to its holpening promises.

I have told one anecdote of Mr. Bright. I must tell another. In the year 1869 he was talking in a more meditative, less confident, tone than usual of the history and prospects of popular progress. "I often think," said he, "that we shall almost immediately have got as far as we can get. We have obtained free trade. We have in towns household suffrage, which will no doubt soon be extended to the counties. Next year we shall have Education. Religious equality may come soon. And then I really don't see what more we can wish for." I will not dwell upon the yet further great changes which he helped to carry, nor on the improvement (from his point of view) of our foreign policy (in which he failed, and thereupon resigned office), nor upon the great proposal for the future of one part of the Empire at which he craned. I would rather point out that almost all the great range of improvements which are now generally believed to be producible by State action, and which now occupy the politicians of all parties when they contemplate the future, were left, in blank unconsciousness of their practical possibility, absolutely out of Mr. Bright's prospect.