of their rough tongues and the enmities which rough
tongues provoke. But such men have usually also possessed some of the
arts of popularity, and have been able to retain the adherence of
their party at large, even when they had alienated many who came into
personal contact with them. This was not Lowe's case. He did not
conceal his contempt for the multitude, and had not the tact needed
for humouring it, any more than for managing the House of Commons. The
very force and keenness of his intellect kept him aloof from other
people and prevented him from understanding their sentiments. He saw
things so clearly that he could not tolerate mental confusion, and was
apt to reach conclusions so fast that he missed perceiving some of the
things which are gradually borne in upon slower minds. There are also
instances of strong men who, though they do not revile their
opponents, incur hatred because their strength and activity make them
feared. Hostility concentrates itself on the opponents deemed most
formidable, and a political leader who is spared while his fellows are
attacked cannot safely assume that this immunity is a tribute to his
virtues. Incessant abuse fell to the lot of Mr. Bright, who was not
often, and of Mr. Gladstone, who was hardly ever, personally bitter in
invective. But in compensation Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone received
enthusiastic loyalty from their followers. For Lowe there was no such
compensation. Even his own side did not love him. There was also a
certain harshness, perhaps a certain narrowness, about his views. Even
in those days of rigid economics, he took an exceptionally rigid view
of all economic problems, refusing to make allowance for any motives
except those of bare self-interest. Though he did not belong by
education or by social ties to the Utilitarian group, and gave an
ungracious reception to J. S. Mill's first speeches in the House of
Commons, he was a far more stringent and consistent exponent of the
harder kind of Benthamism than was Mill himself. He professed, and
doubtless to some extent felt, a contempt for appeals to historical or
literary sentiment, and relished nothing more than deriding his own
classical training as belonging to an effete and absurd scheme of
education. He left his mark on our elementary school system by
establishing the system of payment by results, but nearly every change
made in that system since his day has tended to destroy the
alterations he made and to br