ic favour, as ours do, this
is a hard saying, and it requires to be carefully limited. I do not
mean that our statesmen should assume a pedantic and doctrinaire tone
with the English people; if there is anything which English people
thoroughly detest, it is that tone exactly. And they are right in
detesting it; if a man cannot give guidance and communicate instruction
formally without telling his audience "I am better than you; I have
studied this as you have not," then he is not fit for a guide or an
instructor. A statesman who should show that gaucherie would exhibit a
defect of imagination, and expose an incapacity for dealing with men
which would be a great hindrance to him in his calling. But much
argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal
exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly
utterance of clear conclusions; if a statesman gives these in a
felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so
much the better), he has done his part. He will have given the text,
the scribes in the newspapers will write the sermon. A statesman ought
to show his own nature, and talk in a palpable way what is to him
important truth. And so he will both guide and benefit the nation. But
if, especially at a time when great ignorance has an unusual power in
public affairs, he chooses to accept and reiterate the decisions of
that ignorance, he is only the hireling of the nation, and does little
save hurt it.

I shall be told that this is very obvious, and that everybody knows
that 2 and 2 make 4, and that there is no use in inculcating it. But I
answer that the lesson is not observed in fact; people do not so do
their political sums. Of all our political dangers, the greatest I
conceive is that they will neglect the lesson. In plain English, what I
fear is that both our political parties will bid for the support of the
working man; that both of them will promise to do as he likes if he
will only tell them what it is; that, as he now holds the casting vote
in our affairs, both parties will beg and pray him to give that vote to
them. I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of
poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich
men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for
the office of executing it. Vox populi will be Vox diaboli if it is
worked in that manner.

And, on the other hand, my imagination conjures