reforms for which it provides, signify
a notable advance into places where the thinkers, the pioneers, the
men in the advanced trenches, are accustomed to dwell. Let us
acknowledge, with a sense of pleasure and relief, that this is new
territory. New, that is to say, for this country; not new to the best
organisations of industrial society that we know of. New as a clearly
seen vision and a connected plan of British, statesmanship; not new as
actual experiment in legislation, and as theory held by progressive
thinkers of many schools, including some of the fathers of modern
Liberal doctrine, and most of our economists. What is there in these
pages repugnant to writers of the type of John Mill, Jevons, and
Marshall? How much of them would even be repelled by Cobden? In the
main they preach a gospel--that of national "efficiency"--common to
all reformers, and accepted by Bismarck, the modern archetype of
"Empire-makers," as necessary to the consolidation of the great German
nation. An average Australian or Canadian statesman would read them
through with almost complete approval of every passage, save only
their defence of Free Trade. Nay more; the apology for property which
they put forward--that it must be "associated in the minds of the mass
of the people with ideas of justice and reason"--is that on which the
friends of true conservatism build when they think of the evils of
modern civilisation and the great and continuous efforts necessary to
repair them. Who does not conclude, with Mr. Churchill, that "a more
scientific, a more elaborate, a more comprehensive social
organisation" is indispensable to our country if it is to continue its
march to greatness? Back or forward we must go.

Mr. Churchill, indeed, has thought it wise to raise the specific point
at which, in the process of seeking a finer use and adaptation of the
human material which forms society, the progressive and reforming
statesman parts company with the dogmatic Socialist. There is no need
to labour a distinction which arises from the nature and the
activities of the two forces. British Liberalism is both a mental
habit and a method of politics. Through both these characteristics it
is bound to criticise a State so long as in any degree it rests on the
principles of "Penguin Island"--"respect for the rich and contempt for
the poor," and to modify or repeal the rights of property where they
clearly conflict with human rights. But its idealism and its