on its own merits, how is it to be
distinguished from anarchy? How, but by the due admixture of coercion?
And, that admitted, must we not descend from the mountain-top of
prophecy to the dreary plains of political compromise?"

Up to this point Mendoza had preserved that tone of elaborate irony
which, it will be remembered, was so disconcerting to English
audiences, and stood so much in the way of his popularity. But now his
manner changed. Becoming more serious, and I fear I must add, more
dull than I had ever heard him before, he gave us what I suppose to be
the most intimate exposition he had ever permitted himself to offer of
the Conservative point of view as he understood it.

"These," he resumed, "are questions which I must leave my friend to
answer for himself. The ground is too high for me. I have no skill in
the flights of speculation. I take no pleasure in the enunciation of
principles. To my restricted vision, placed as I am upon the earth,
isolated facts obtrude themselves with a capricious particularity which
defies my powers of generalization. And that, perhaps, is the reason
why I attached myself to the party to which I have the honour to
belong. For it is, I think, the party which sees things as they are;
as they are, that is, to mere human vision. Remenham, in his haste,
has called us the party of reaction. I would rather say, we are the
party of realism. We have in view, not Man, but Englishmen; not ideal
polities, but the British Constitution; not Political Economy, but the
actual course of our trade. Through this great forest of fact, this
tangle of old and new, these secular oaks, sturdy shrubs, beautiful
parasitic creepers, we move with a prudent diffidence, following the
old tracks, endeavouring to keep them open, but hesitating to cut new
routes till we are clear as to the goal for which we are asked to
sacrifice our finest timber. Fundamental changes we regard as
exceptional and pathological. Yet, being bound by no theories, when we
are convinced of their necessity, we inaugurate them boldly and carry
them through to the end. And thus it is that having decided that the
time had come to call the people to the councils of the nation, we
struck boldly and once for all by a measure which I will never
admit--and here I regret that Cantilupe is not with me--which I will
never admit to be at variance with the best, and soundest traditions of
conservatism.

"But such measures are exc