ght),
derive at least half their power from their correspondence with dominant
sentiments. That this is so is admitted by the now celebrated appeal
from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a
verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of
educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or
may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the
making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of
certain widespread feelings is a condition requisite for full
appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may
be good, but it is faith which gives them convincing power. They derive
their cogency from a favouring atmosphere of opinion or feeling. Two
features of recent controversy suffice of themselves (if proof were
needed) to establish the truth of this assertion. The rhetorical
emphasis laid by Home Rulers on the baseness of the arts which carried
the Act of Union is, as an argument in favour of repealing the Act,
little else than irrational. The assumed infamy of Pitt does not prove
the alleged wisdom of Gladstone; and to urge the repeal of an Act which
has stood for nearly a century, because it was carried by corruption, is
in the eye of reason as absurd as to question the title of modern French
landowners because of the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Even a
Legitimist would not now base a moral claim to an estate on the ground
that his grandfather was deprived of it through confiscation and murder.
But rhetoric is not governed by the laws of logic, and insistence on the
corruption or the criminality by which the Act of Union was carried is
an effective method of conciliating popular sentiment to the cause of
repeal. No notion again has been more widely circulated or put forward
on higher authority than that past reforms have been due in the main to
the enthusiasm of the masses. But no notion is more directly at variance
with the lessons of history. In the eighteenth century the enlightenment
of the Whig aristocracy was England's safeguard against the Jacobitism
and the bigotry of the crowd. Every effort in favour of religious
liberty was till recently the work of an educated minority who opposed
popular prejudice. In the last century popular sentiment would have
denied all rights to Jews; in 1780 Lord George Gordon was the hero of
the people of England, and even more emphatically of the people of
Scot