y be quite wrong, but I can only
say that it seemed to me like taking an unfair advantage, unfair to
our opponents, and almost insulting to our friends. Still, from a
worldly point of view, I was no doubt wrong, and it is certainly true
that I was often left in a minority. My friends have told me again and
again that if a good measure or a good man is to be carried, good men
must do some dirty work. If they cannot do that, they are of no use,
and I doubt not that I have often been considered a very useless man
by my political and academic friends, because I trusted to reason
where there was no reason to trust to. I was asked to write letters,
to address and post letters, to promise travelling expenses or even
convivial entertainments at Oxford, to get leaders and leaderettes
inserted in newspapers. I simply loathed it, and at last declined to
do it. If a measure is carried by promise, not by argument, if an
election is carried by personal influence, not by reason, what happens
is very often the same as what happens when fruit is pulled off a tree
before it is ripe. It is expected to ripen by itself, but it never
becomes sweet, and often it rots. A premature measure may be carried
through the House by a minister with a powerful majority, but it does
not acquire vitality and maturity by being carried; it often remains
on the Statute-book a dead letter, till in the end it has to be
abolished with other rubbish.

However, I have learnt to admire the indefatigable assiduity of men
who have slowly and partially secured their converts and their
recruits, and thus have carried in the end what they thought right and
reasonable. I have seen it particularly at Oxford, where
undergraduates were indoctrinated by their tutors, till they had taken
their degree and could vote with their betters. I take all the blame
and shame upon myself as a useless member of Congregation and
Convocation, and of society at large. I was wrong in supposing that
the walls of Jericho would fall before the blast of reason, and wrong
in abstaining from joining in the braying of rams' horns and the
shouts of the people. I was fortunate, however, in counting among my
most intimate friends some of the most active and influential
reformers in University, Church, and State, and it is quite possible
that I may often have influenced them in the hours of sweet converse;
nay, that standing in the second rank, I may have helped to load the
guns which they fired off