not seem to know any better, - they repeat the words of the hustings as if they were parts of their creed; and as for the more intellectual members who know better, no one of good manners likes to press them too closely in argument on politics, any more than he likes to press a clergyman too strictly on religion. In both cases the status in the world depends on the belief in certain opinions; and therefore it is thought rather ill-bred, except for some great reason, to try to injure that belief. Intellectual deference used to be paid to members of Parliament; but now - at least in London, where the species is known-the remains of that deference are rare.

The other side of the same phenomenon is the increased power of the provinces, and especially of the constituencies: any gust of popular excitement runs through them instantly, grows greater and greater as it goes, till it gains such huge influence that for a moment the central educated world is powerless. No doubt, if only time can be gained, the excitement passes away; something new succeeds, and the ordinary authority of trained and practiced intelligence revives but if an election were now to happen at an instant of popular fury, that fury would have little or nothing to withstand it. And even in ordinary times, the power of the constituencies is too great: they are fast reducing the members, especially the weaker sort of them, to delegates. There is already, in many places, a committee which often telegraphs to London hoping that their member will vote this way or that; and the member is unwilling not to do so, because at the next election, if offended, the committee may perchance turn the scale against him: and this dependence weakens the intellectual influence of Parliament, and of that higher kind of mind of which Parliament ought to be the organ.

We must remember that if now we feel these evils, we must expect ere long to feel them much more. The Reform Act of 1867 followed in the main

year we shall The two prece

the precedent of 1832; and year by feel its consequences more and more. dents which have been set will of necessity, in the English world which is so much guided by precedent, determine the character of future Reform Acts; and if they do, the supremacy of the central group of trained and educated men which our old system of parliamentary choice created will be completely destroyed, for it is already half gone.

I know it is thought that we can revive this intellectual influence. Many thoughtful reformers believe that by means of Mr. Hare's system of voting, by the cumulative suffrage, the limited suffrage, or by some others like them, we may be able to replace that which the legislation of 1832 began to destroy, and that which those who follow them are destroying; and I do not wish to say a word against this hope,— on the contrary, I think that it is one of the most important duties of English politicians to frame these plans into the best form of which they are capable, and to try to obtain the assent of the country to them but the difficulty is immense. The reformers of 1832 destroyed intellectual constituencies in great numbers without creating any new ones, and without saying-indeed, without thinking-that it was desirable to create any. They thus, by conspicuous action which is the most influential mode of political instruction, taught mankind that an increase in the power of numbers was the change most to be desired in England; and of course the mass of mankind are only too ready to think so,-they are always prone to believe their own knowledge to be "for all practical purposes" sufficient, and to wish to be emancipated from the authority of the higher culture. What we have now to do, therefore, is to induce this self-satisfied, stupid, inert mass of men to admit its own insufficiency, which is very hard; to understand fine schemes for supplying that insufficiency, which is harder; and to exert itself to get those ideas adopted,

which is hardest of all. Such is the duty which, the reformers of 1832 have cast upon us.

And this is what of necessity must happen if you set men like Lord Althorp to guide legislative changes in complex institutions. Being without culture, they do not know how these institutions grew; being without insight, they only see one half of their effect; being without foresight, they do not know what will happen if they are enlarged; being without originality, they cannot devise anything new to supply if necessary the place of what is old. Common-sense no doubt they have; but common-sense without instruction can no more wisely revise old institutions than it can write the Nautical Almanac. Probably they will do some present palpable good, but they will do so at a heavy cost; years after they have passed away, the bad effects of that which they did and of the precedents which they set will be hard to bear and difficult to change. Such men are admirably suited to early and simple times, - English history is full of them, and England has been made mainly by them; but they fail in later times, when the work of the past is accumulated, and no question is any longer simple. The simplicity of their one-ideaed minds, which is suited to the common arithmetic and vulgar fractions of early societies, is not suitedindeed, rather unfits them - for the involved analysis and complex "problem papers" of later ages.

There is little that in a sketch like this need be said of Lord Althorp's life after the passing of the Reform Act. The other acts of Lord Grey's ministry have nothing so memorable or so characteristic of Lord Althorp that anything need be said about them; nor does any one in the least care now as to the once celebrated mistake of Mr. Littleton in dealing with O'Connell, or Lord Althorp's connection with it.* Parliamentary history is only interesting when it is. important constitutional history, or when it illustrates * See Memoir, Chap. xxii.

something in the character of some interesting man. But the end of Lord Althorp's public life was very curious. In the November of 1834 his brother Lord Spencer died; and as he was then leader of the House of Commons, a successor for him had to be found.* But William IV., whose Liberal partialities had long since died away, began by objecting to every one proposed, and ended by turning out the ministry,another event in his reign which our coming republicans will no doubt make the most of; but I have nothing to do with the King and the constitutional question now, - my business is with Lord Althorp. He acted very characteristically: he said that a retirement from office was to him the "cessation of acute pain," and never afterwards would touch it again, though he lived for many years. Nor was this an idle affectation, far less indolence. "You must be aware,' he said once before in a letter to Lord Brougham, 'that my being in office is nothing more or less than misery to me. I am perfectly sure that no man ever disliked it to such a degree as I do; and indeed, the first thing that usually comes into my head when I wake is how I am to get out of it." He retired into the country and occupied himself with the rural pursuits which he loved best, attended at quarter-sessions, and was active as a farmer. "Few persons," said an old shepherd, "could compete with my lord in knowledge of sheep; "She delighted to watch a whole flock pass, and seemed to know them as if he had lived with them. "Of all my former pursuits," he wrote, just after Lady Althorp's death and in the midst of his grief, "the only one in which I now take any interest is . . . breeding of stock: it is the only one in which I can build castles in the air."|| And as soon as he could,

* That is to say, Althorp succeeded to his brother's title as Earl Spencer, and had to leave the Commons and enter the House of Lords. — ED. Note at opening of Chap. xxiii., Memoir. Chap. xxiii., at beginning.

§ Chap. xxiii.

| Chap. x.

among such castles in the air he lived and died,no doubt, too, much better for himself than for many of his friends, who long wanted to lure him back to politics. He was wise with the solid wisdom of agricultural England, popular and useful, sagacious in usual things, a model in common duties, well able to advise men in the daily difficulties which are the staple of human life; but beyond this he could not go. Having no call to decide on more intellectual questions, he was distressed and pained when he had to do so. He was a man so picturesquely out of place in a great scene that if a great describer gets hold of him he may be long remembered; and it was the misfortune of his life that the simplicity of his purposes and the trustworthiness of his character raised him at a great conjuncture to a high place for which Nature had not meant him, and for which he felt that she had not meant him.

NOTE TO PAGE 344.- This may refer either to the first or to the second Lord Liverpool; but in either case the inclusion in this list is an error. The first Earl was appointed to his first office just after his election to Parliament, and both stations were due to his brilliant college career and a 66 'pull" on Lord Bute's administration. The second Earl was in Parliament ten years (1791-1801) before holding his first office, so that the statement in the text is glaringly the reverse of truth.- ED.