tertained
of political life. But now my expectations not only from this but
from any government are very small. If they do a little good, if
they prevent others from doing a good deal of evil, if they
maintain an unblemished character, it is my fixed conviction that
under the circumstances of the times I can as an independent member
of parliament, for I am now virtually such, ask no more. And I do
entertain the strongest impression that if, with your honourable
and upright mind, you had been called upon for years to consult as
one responsible for the movements of great parliamentary bodies, if
you thus had been accustomed to look into public questions at close
quarters, your expectations from an administration, and your
dispositions towards it, would be materially changed....

The principles and moral powers of government as such are sinking
day by day, and it is not by laws and parliaments that they can be
renovated.... I must venture even one step further, and say that
such schemes of regeneration as those which were propounded (not, I
am bound to add, by you) at Manchester,[181] appear to me to be
most mournful delusions; and their re-issue, for their real
parentage is elsewhere, from the bosom of the party to which we
belong, an omen of the worst kind if they were likely to obtain
currency under the new sanction they have received. It is most easy
to complain as you do of _laissez-faire_ and _laissez-aller_; nor
do I in word or in heart presume to blame you; but I should sorely
blame myself if with my experience and convictions of _the growing
impotence of government for its highest functions_, I were either
to recommend attempts beyond its powers, which would react
unfavourably upon its remaining capabilities, or to be a party to
proposed substitutes for its true moral and paternal work which
appear to me mere counterfeits.

RELIGION AT OXFORD

On this letter we may note in passing, first, that the tariff
legislation did in the foundations what the Young England party wished
to do in a superficial and flimsy fashion; and second, it was the tariff
legislation that drove back a rising tide of socialism, both directly by
vastly improving the condition of labour, and indirectly by force of the
doctrine of free exchange which was thus corroborated by