passed with the assent of the
Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act
passed in her name. To maintain, as every man versed in history must
maintain, that ignorance must from the necessity of the case be the ally
of prejudice, is not to deny to the people their merits or virtues. If
ignorance were wisdom as well as bliss, every effort in favour of
popular education were folly. No doubt the rich or educated classes are
slaves to delusions from which the crowd are free. This concession falls
far short of the doctrine that legislative progress is mainly due to the
soundness of popular feeling. That this doctrine should in one shape or
another have been promulgated, and have formed the basis of an argument
for a complicated change in the constitution, is a sign that the
advocates of the innovation or reform feel instinctively that the
strength of their case lies in its coincidence with dominant sentiment.
Nor is it hard to see what is the condition of sentiment or opinion
which favours the doctrine of Home Rule. The matter, however, is of such
importance as well to repay careful examination.

For the first time in the course of English history, national policy has
passed under the sway, not so much of democratic convictions, but of a
far stronger power--democratic sentiment. Every idea which can rightly
or wrongly be called popular, commands, even among persons who deem
themselves Conservatives, ready assent or superstitious deference. Hence
flow (be it at once conceded) some of the best characteristics of the
age, such as the detestation of inhumanity; the distrust in violent
methods of government; the dislike to anything which savours of
indifference to the wishes, or callousness to the wants, of the people.
Hence the growth of the conviction that property has at least as many
duties as rights, and of the faith inspired, rather by compassion than
by reason, that the toiling multitudes can and must be made to share in
the prosperity and the luxuries created in great part by their ceaseless
labour. From the same source--from the prevalence of the democratic
spirit--arise a crowd of dubious not to say ignoble ideas, as that the
voice of the majority is the voice of God; that it is a folly, if not a
crime, to resist any widespread phase of belief or of passion; that any
body of persons claiming to be united by a sense of nationality
possesses an inherent and divine right to be treated as an indepe