opponents should
have blundered and quarrelled, being men active and in earnest, was
to have been expected. Such blunderings and quarrellings have been
a matter of course since politics have been politics, and since
religion has been religion. When men combine to do nothing, how
should there be disagreement? When men combine to do much, how should
there not be disagreement? Thirty men can sit still, each as like the
other as peas. But put your thirty men up to run a race, and they
will soon assume different forms. And in doing nothing, you can
hardly do amiss. Let the doers of nothing have something of action
forced upon them, and they, too, will blunder and quarrel.

The wonder is that there should ever be in a reforming party enough
of consentaneous action to carry any reform. The reforming or Liberal
party in British politics had thus stumbled,--and stumbled till it
fell. And now there had been a great Conservative reaction! Many of
the most Liberal constituencies in the country had been untrue to
their old political convictions. And, as the result, Lord Drummond
was Prime Minister in the House of Lords,--with Sir Timothy Beeswax
acting as first man in the House of Commons.

It cannot be denied that Sir Timothy had his good points as a
politician. He was industrious, patient, clear-sighted, intelligent,
courageous, and determined. Long before he had had a seat in the
House, when he was simply making his way up to the probability of a
seat by making a reputation as an advocate, he had resolved that he
would be more than an Attorney-General, more than a judge,--more,
as he thought it, than a Chief Justice; but at any rate something
different. This plan he had all but gained,--and it must be
acknowledged that he had been moved by a grand and manly ambition.
But there were drawbacks to the utility and beauty of Sir Timothy's
character as a statesman. He had no idea as to the necessity or
non-necessity of any measure whatever in reference to the well-being
of the country. It may, indeed, be said that all such ideas were to
him absurd, and the fact that they should be held by his friends and
supporters was an inconvenience. He was not in accord with those who
declare that a Parliament is a collection of windbags which puff, and
blow, and crack to the annoyance of honest men. But to him Parliament
was a debating place, by having a majority in which, and by no other
means, he,--or another,--might become the great man of t