g fact till I realized that behind the
platform was a tall, greased pole, up which successive competitors were
doing their best to climb, the victor's reward being a large leg of
mutton at the top of it, and the applause being excited by the feats,
not of the orator, but of the acrobats.

The word "acrobats," indeed, represents not inaptly the character which
I had from the first imputed to the extreme reformers (whether Radicals
or Socialists) as a whole. These extremists were, in my opinion, at once
wrong and popular, not because they actually invented either the facts
or principles proclaimed by them, but because they practiced the art of
contorting facts into any shape they pleased, no matter what, so long as
this amounted to a grimace which was calculated to attract attention,
and which, in the absence of any opponents who could counter them by
detailed exposure, could, by constant repetition, be invested with the
prestige of truth. And why was exposure of the requisite kind wanting?
Simply because the Conservatives as a whole were so ignorant that they
did not know, or so timorous or apathetic that they did not dare to use,
the true facts, figures, or principles by the promulgation of which
alone the false might be systematically discredited. The need of a
scientific Conservatism equipped with these weapons of precision was not
so urgent at that time as it has since then become. But I felt it even
then. I foresaw how rapidly this need was bound to be aggravated. It had
haunted me even at Beaulieu, when I wandered among the sleeping flowers
by the light of Mediterranean moons.

The difficulties in the way of formulating a true scientific
Conservatism, which the masses shall be able to comprehend, I am the
last person to ignore. There is the difficulty of formulating true
general principles. There is the difficulty of collecting and verifying
the statistical and historical facts, to which general principles must
be accommodated. There is the difficulty of bringing moral and social
sentiments into harmony with objective conditions which no sentiment can
permanently alter. There is the difficulty of transforming many analyses
of facts of different kinds into a synthesis moral and rational, by the
light of which human beings can live; and, feeling my way slowly, I now
attempted to indicate what the nature of such a synthesis would be. In
so doing I felt that political problems of life reunited themselves with
those wh