land. And Burke was forced to present an elaborate defence to his
constituents at Bristol for taking part in an attempt to mitigate the
penal laws against the Roman Catholics. There is every reason to suppose
that even in 1829 a _plebiscite_, had one been possible, would have
negatived the Catholic Relief Bill. The mitigation again of the Criminal
Law was the work of thinkers like Romilly and Bentham. These eminent
reformers would have been much surprised to have been told that the
uneducated masses were their staunch supporters. One of the greatest
improvements ever effected by legislation was the reform in the
administration of parochial relief. The new poor law was essentially
unpopular; its principles were established by economists; its enactment
was due to the Whigs, supported, as it should always be remembered to
his credit, by the Duke of Wellington. It may be conjectured from recent
legislation that at this very moment an indiscriminate renewal of
outdoor relief would command the approval of the agricultural voters.
Protection in the form of the corn laws was unpopular in England; this,
however, cannot with fairness be put down to the moral or intellectual
credit of the multitude. The corn laws were disliked because they
enhanced the price of bread. Even as it was, the Chartists used to
interrupt the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, and it is an idle
fancy that the dangers of a protective tariff are in themselves more
patent to the electors of England than to the democracy of France or of
America. Trades Unionism is in many of its features a form of
protectionism. If again we turn to foreign policy, we must read history
with a strangely perverted eye if we hold that the people have in
general condemned wars, whether just or unjust. There is hardly to be
named a great war in which England has been engaged which has not
engaged popular support. In the struggle with the American Colonies the
warlike sentiment of the people was undoubtedly opposed to the prudence
and justice of a small body of enlightened men, who found their
representative in Burke. In England, it is true, no great change of law
or of policy can in general be effected until it has in some sort been
sanctioned by popular approval. But to attribute every advance, or even
most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step
forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the
notion that because every statute is