one direction rather
than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards
centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious
facts of French history from the days of Lewis XI. or Cardinal
Richelieu down to Napoleon Bonaparte. So far from French models
encouraging "arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race and
dialect," France is the first great example in modern history, for
good or for evil, of a persevering process of national unification,
and the firm suppression of all provincial particularismus. This
is not only true of French political leaders in general: it is
particularly true of the Jacobin leaders. Rousseau himself, I admit,
did in one place point in the direction of confederation; but only in
the sense that for freedom on the one hand, and just administration
on the other, the unit should not be too large to admit of the
participation of the persons concerned in the management of their
own public affairs. If the Jacobins had not been overwhelmed by the
necessity of keeping out the invaders, they might have developed the
germ of truth in Rousseau's loose way of stating the expediency of
decentralisation. As it was, above all other French schools, the
Jacobins dealt most sternly with particularist pretensions. Of all
men, these supposed masters, teachers, and models of mine are least
to be called Separatists. To them more than to any other of the
revolutionary parties the great heresy of Federalism was most odious;
and if I were a faithful follower of the Jacobin model, I should
have least patience with nationalist sentiment whether in Ireland,
Scotland, or Wales, and should most rigorously insist on that
cast-iron incorporation which, as it happens, in the case of Ireland
I believe to be equally hopeless and undesirable. This explanation,
therefore, of my favour for Welsh Disestablishment is as absurdly
ignorant as it is far-fetched and irrelevant.

[Footnote 1: Nov. 3, 1886.]

The logical process is worth an instant's examination. The position is
no less than this,--that to attempt truly to appreciate the place and
the value in the history of thought and social movements of men who
have been a hundred years in their graves, and to sympathise with
certain sides and certain effects of their activity under the peculiar
circumstances in which French society then found itself, is the same
thing as binding yourself to apply their theories and to imitate their
activit