ld of speculation a movement has already set in
against ideas which are exerting their full effect in the world of
action and of legislation.

Law-making in England is the work of men well advanced in life; the
politicians who guide the House of Commons, to say nothing of the peers
who lead the House of Lords, are few of them below thirty, and most of
them are above forty, years of age. They have formed or picked up their
convictions, and, what is of more consequence, their prepossessions, in
early manhood, which is the one period of life when men are easily
impressed with new ideas. Hence English legislators retain the
prejudices or modes of thinking which they acquired in their youth; and
when, late in life, they take a share in actual legislation, they
legislate in accordance with the doctrines which were current, either
generally or in the society to which the law-givers belonged, in the
days of their early manhood. The law-makers, therefore, of 1850 may give
effect to the opinions of 1830, whilst the legislators of 1880 are
likely enough to impress upon the statute book the beliefs of 1860, or
rather the ideas which in the one case attracted the young men of 1830
and in the other the youth of 1860. We need not therefore be surprised
to find that a current of opinion may exert its greatest legislative
influence just when its force is beginning to decline. The tide turns
when at its height; a school of thought or feeling which still governs
law-makers has begun to lose its authority among men of a younger
generation who are not yet able to influence legislation.

_Fourth_, the reigning legislative opinion of the day has never, at any
rate during the nineteenth century, exerted absolute or despotic
authority. Its power has always been diminished by the existence of
counter-currents or cross-currents of opinion which were not in harmony
with the prevalent opinion of the time.

A counter-current here means a body of opinion, belief, or sentiment
more or less directly opposed to the dominant opinion of a particular
era. Counter-currents of this kind have generally been supplied by the
survival of ideas or convictions which are gradually losing their hold
upon a given generation, and particularly the youthful part thereof.
This kind of "conservatism" which prompts men to retain convictions
which are losing their hold upon the mass of the world is found, it
should be remarked, as much among the adherents of one religious