r did not act in the spirit
properly called Liberal. Unluckily the flattery of the working-man has
come into fashion; we ignore his necessary limitations, and we deify the
'casual opinions and ineffectual public sentiments' of the
half-educated. 'The great characteristic danger of our days is the
growth of a quiet, ignoble littleness of character and spirit.' We
should aim, therefore, at impressing our new masters 'with a lofty
notion not merely of the splendour of the history of their country, but
of the part which it has to play in the world, and of the spirit in
which it should be played.' He gives as an example a topic to which he
constantly turns. The 'whole fabric' of the Indian Empire, he says, is a
monument of energy, 'skill and courage, and, on the whole, of justice
and energy, such as the world never saw before.' How are we to deal with
that great inheritance bequeathed to us by the courage of heroes and the
wisdom of statesmen? India is but one instance. There is hardly an
institution in the country which may not be renewed if we catch the
spirit which presided over its formation. Liberals have now to be
authors instead of critics, and their solution of such problems will
decide whether their success is to be a curse or a blessing.

This gives the keynote of his writings in the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' He
frankly recognises the necessity, and therefore does not discuss the
advisability, of a large extension of the franchise. He protests only
against the view, which he attributes to Bright, that the new voters are
to enter as victors storming the fortress of old oppressors, holding
that they should be rather cordially invited to take their place in a
stately mansion upheld for eight centuries by their ancestors. When
people are once admitted, however, the pretext for admission is of
little importance. Fitzjames gradually comes to have his doubts. There
is, he says, a liberalism of the intellect and a liberalism of
sentiment. The intellectual liberal is called a 'cold-hearted
doctrinaire' because he asks only whether a theory be true or false; and
because he wishes for statesmanlike reforms of the Church, the
educational system, and the law, even though the ten-pound householder
may be indifferent to them. But the sentimental liberal thought only of
such measures as would come home to the ten-pound householder; and
apparently this kind of liberal was getting the best of it. The various
party manoeuvres which culmin