tle it to discussion; discussion being the only process by which
people are likely to be induced to accept it, or else to find good
grounds for finally dismissing it.

It is precisely because we believe that opinion, and nothing but
opinion, can effect great permanent changes, that we ought to be
careful to keep this most potent force honest, wholesome, fearless, and
independent. Take the political field. Politicians and newspapers almost
systematically refuse to talk about a new idea, which is not capable of
being at once embodied in a bill, and receiving the royal assent before
the following August. There is something rather contemptible, seen from
the ordinary standards of intellectual integrity, in the position of a
minister who waits to make up his mind whether a given measure, say the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, is in itself and on the merits
desirable, until the official who runs diligently up and down the
backstairs of the party, tells him that the measure is practicable and
required in the interests of the band. On the one hand, a leader is
lavishly panegyrised for his highmindedness, in suffering himself to be
driven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party is
extolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out of
its convictions by its leader. It is hard to decide which is the more
discreditable and demoralising sight. The education of chiefs by
followers, and of followers by chiefs, into the abandonment in a month
of the traditions of centuries or the principles of a lifetime may
conduce to the rapid and easy working of the machine. It certainly marks
a triumph of the political spirit which the author of _The Prince_ might
have admired. It is assuredly mortal to habits of intellectual
self-respect in the society which allows itself to be amused by the
cajolery and legerdemain and self-sophistication of its rulers.

Of course there are excellent reasons why a statesman immersed in the
actual conduct of affairs, should confine his attention to the work
which his hands find to do. But the fact that leading statesmen are of
necessity so absorbed in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the better
reason why as many other people as possible should busy themselves in
helping to prepare opinion for the practical application of unfamiliar
but weighty and promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussion
of them upon their merits. As a matter of fact it is not the men m