able task of
creating privileges for the many; a deliberate attempt to extirpate the
servile dependence of the old poor law, and a definite abandonment of
the plan of distributing economic advantages by eleemosynary state
action. This policy was based on the conviction that personal liberty
and freedom of private enterprise were the adequate, constructive
influences of a progressive civilisation. Too much importance has
perhaps been attached to the relatively unimportant question of the
freedom of international trade, for this was only part of a general
policy of emancipation which had a much more far-reaching scope. Rightly
understood the political philosophy of that time, put forward by the
competent statesmen who were then trusted by the democracy, proclaimed
the principle of liberty and freedom of exchange as the true solvents of
the economic problems of the day. This policy remained in force during
the ministry of Sir R. Peel and lasted right down to the time of the
great budgets of Mr. Gladstone.

If we might venture, therefore, to add another to the definitions of
Montesquieu, we might say that the principle animating a liberal
constitutional government was liberty, and that this involved a definite
plan for enlarging the sphere of liberty as the organising principle of
civil society. To what then are we to impute the decadence from this
type into which parliamentary government seems now to have fallen? Can
we attribute this to neglect or to exaggeration of its animating
principle, as suggested in the formula of Montesquieu? It is a question
which the reader may find leisure to investigate; we confine ourselves
to marking what seem to be some of the stages of decay.

When the forces of destructive radicalism had done their legitimate
work, it seemed a time for rest and patience, for administration rather
than for fresh legislation and for a pause during which the principles
of liberty and free exchange might have been left to organise the
equitable distribution of the inevitably increasing wealth of the
country. The patience and the conviction which were needed to allow of
such a development, rightly or wrongly, were not forthcoming, and
politicians and parties have not been wanting to give effect to
remedies hastily suggested to and adopted by the people. Political
leaders soon came to realise that recent enfranchisements had added a
new electorate for whom philosophical principles had no charm. At a
later dat