ublic affairs many things are disputable,
there are some which belong to history and which have passed out
of the region of contention. It is, for example as I conceive,
beyond question that the century now expiring has exhibited since
the close of its first quarter a period of unexampled activity
both in legislative and administrative changes; that these
changes, taken in the mass, have been in the direction of true and
most beneficial progress; that both the conditions and the
franchises of the people have made in relation to the former state
of things, an extraordinary advance; that of these reforms an
overwhelming proportion have been effected by direct action of the
liberal party, or of statesmen such as Peel and Canning, ready to
meet odium or to forfeit power for the public good; and that in
every one of the fifteen parliaments the people of Scotland have
decisively expressed their convictions in favour of this wise,
temperate, and in every way remarkable policy.(316)

To charge him with habitually rousing popular forces into dangerous
excitement, is to ignore or misread his action in some of the most
critical of his movements. "Here is a man," said Huxley, "with the
greatest intellect in Europe, and yet he debases it by simply following
majorities and the crowd." He was called a mere mirror of the passing
humours and intellectual confusions of the popular mind. He had nothing,
said his detractors, but a sort of clever pilot's eye for winds and
currents, and the rising of the tide to the exact height that would float
him and his cargo over the bar. All this is the exact opposite of the
truth. What he thought was that the statesman's gift consisted in insight
into the facts of a particular era, disclosing the existence of material
for forming public opinion and directing public opinion to a given
purpose. In every one of his achievements of high mark--even in his last
marked failure of achievement--he expressly formed, or endeavoured to form
and create, the public opinion upon which he knew that in the last resort
he must depend.

(M190) We have seen the triumph of 1853.(317) Did he, in renewing the most
hated of taxes, run about anxiously feeling the pulse of public opinion?
On the contrary, he grappled with the facts with infinite labour--and half
his genius was labour--he built up a great plan; he carried it to the
cabinet; they warned him that the