than from roughs and clowns. He can discern
no blue sky in any quarter. "In politics," he says, "the most
powerful of all causes is the timidity, the listlessness, and the
superficiality of the generality of minds" (p. 73). This is carrying
criticism of democracy into an indictment against human nature. What
is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance
and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and
superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more
sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar
on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of
contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best
and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals
are still passably prudent, and Conservatives quite sufficiently
wide-awake.

Another of the passages in Sir Henry Maine's book, that savours rather
of the party caricaturist than of the "dispassionate student of
politics," is the following:--

"There is some resemblance between the period of political reform
in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation
in the sixteenth. Now as then the multitude of followers must be
distinguished from the smaller group of leaders. Now as then
there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall
prevail.... But behind these, now as then, there is a crowd which
has imbibed a delight in change for its own sake, who would reform
the Suffrage, or the House of Lords, or the Land Laws, or the
Union with Ireland, in precisely the same spirit in which the mob
behind the reformers of religion broke the nose of a saint in
stone, made a bonfire of copes and surplices, or shouted for the
government of the Church by presbyteries" (p. 130).

We should wish to look at this remarkable picture a little more
closely. That there exist Anabaptists in the varied hosts of the
English reformers is true. The feats of the Social Democrats, however,
at the recent election hardly convince us that they have very
formidable multitudes behind them. Nor is it they who concern
themselves with such innovations as those which Sir Henry Maine
specifies. The Social Democrats, even of the least red shade, go a
long way beyond and below such trifles as Suffrage or the Upper House.
To say of the crowd who do concern themselves with reform of the
Suffrage, or the Land Laws