in these events."
--Richard II, Act V.

The state of society in the nineteenth century would have but few
attractions for us of the twentieth, were we able to return along
the vista of a hundred years. Our manners and customs are so vastly
different from those of our great-grandfathers that we should feel
out of place indeed had we to go back, even for a short time, to
their uncouth and imperfect ways. Their extraordinarily complex
method of governing themselves, and their intricate political
machinery would be very distressing to us, and are calculated
to make one think that a keen pleasure in governing or in being
overgoverned--not a special aptitude or genius for governing--must
have been very common among them. From the alarming blunders
made in directing public affairs, and from the manner in which
beneficial measures were opposed by the party out of office, it
appears quite certain that the instincts of true statesmanship did
not animate all classes then as now. Nevertheless our forefathers
went into the work of governing themselves and each other with
a great deal of vim. They had no well drawn out formulae to
work upon as we have, but they went at things in a sort of
rule-of-thumb, rough-and-ready style, and when one party had
dragged the country into the mire, the other dragged it out again.
It was customary for the party that was out of office to say that
the party that was in was corrupt and venal--that every man of it
was a liar, was a thief, was taking bribes, would soon be kicked
out, etc. Then the party that was in had to say that the party that
was out should look to its own sins and remember that everyone of
its men when they were in proved himself incapable, insensible to
every feeling of shame, with no susceptibilities except in his
pocket, corrupt in every fibre, being justly rewarded when hurled
from office by an indignant people, etc., etc. The wonder is that
the country ever got governed at all, but it seems that all public
men who had any fixed and sensible ideas and wished to see them
carried out, had to make themselves callous, pachydermatous,
hardened against this offensive mud-slinging. Of course politics
did not elevate the man, nor the man politics, while things went on
thus. A general demoralization and lowering of the tone of public
opinion naturally resulted, which did not improve till the stirring
events of the summer of 1887 brought men to their senses again.