equation of ambition with indispensability. "Woe
to him," says De Lolme, "... who should endeavor to make the people
believe that their fate depends on the persevering virtue of a single
citizen." He sees the paramount value of freedom of the press. This, as
he says, with the necessity that members should be re-elected, "has
delivered into the hands of the people at large the exercise of the
censorial power." He has no doubt but that resistance is the remedy
whereby governmental encroachment can be prevented; "resistance," he
says, "is the ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of
power." He points out how real is the guarantee of liberty where the
onus of proof in criminal cases is thrown upon the government. He
regards with admiration the supremacy of the civil over the military
arm, and the skillful way in which, contrary to French experience, it
has been found possible to maintain a standing army without adding to
the royal power. Nor can he fail to admire the insight which organizes
"the agitation of the popular mind," not as "the forerunner of violent
commotions" but to "animate all parts of the state." Therein De Lolme
had grasped the real essence of party government.

It was, of course, no more than symptomatic of his time that cabinet and
prime minister should have escaped his notice. A more serious defect was
his inability, with the Wilkes contest prominently in his notice, to
see that the people had assumed a new importance. For the masses,
indeed, De Lolme had no enthusiasm. "A passive share," he thought, "was
the only one that could, with safety to the state, be trusted" to the
humble man. "The greater part," he wrote, "of those who compose this
multitude, taken up with the care of providing for their subsistence,
have neither sufficient leisure, nor even, in consequence of their
imperfect education, the degree of information, requisite for functions
of this kind." Such an attitude blinded him to the significance of the
American conflict, which he saw unattended by its moral implications. He
trusted too emphatically to the power of mechanisms to realize that
institutions which allowed of such manipulation as that of George III
could not be satisfactory once the people had awakened to a sense of its
own power. The real social forces of the time found there no channels of
activity; and the difference between De Lolme and Bagehot is the
latter's power to go behind the screen of statute to the inner