pends wholly on a certain
proposition, namely this, that there is about to be a crisis in
the history of the constitution, growing out of the extension of
the franchise, and that it is my duty to do what I can in aiding
to steer the ship through the boiling waters of this crisis. My
answer is simple. There is no crisis at all in view. There is a
process of slow modification and development mainly in directions
which I view with misgiving. "Tory democracy," the favourite idea
on that side, is no more like the conservative party in which I
was bred, than it is like liberalism. In fact less. It is
demagogism, only a demagogism not ennobled by love and
appreciation of liberty, but applied in the worst way, to put down
the pacific, law-respecting, economic elements which ennobled the
old conservatism, living upon the fomentation of angry passions,
and still in secret as obstinately attached as ever to the evil
principle of class interests. The liberalism of to-day is better
in what I have described as ennobling the old conservatism; nay,
much better, yet far from being good. Its pet idea is what they
call construction,--that is to say, taking into the hands of the
state the business of the individual man. Both the one and the
other have much to estrange me, and have had for many, many years.
But, with all this, there is no crisis. I have even the hope that
while the coming change may give undue encouragement to
"construction," it will be favourable to the economic, pacific,
law-regarding elements; and the sense of justice which abides
tenaciously in the masses will never knowingly join hands with the
fiend of Jingoism. On the whole, I do not abandon the hope that it
may mitigate the chronic distemper, and have not the smallest fear
of its bringing about an acute or convulsive action. You leave me
therefore rooted in my evil mind....

The activity of the left wing, acute, perhaps, but not convulsive, became
much more embarrassing than the desire of the right wing to be inactive.
Mr. Chamberlain had been rapidly advancing in public prominence, and he
now showed that the agitation against the House of Lords was to be only
the beginning and not the end. At Ipswich (January 14), he said this
country had been called the paradise of the rich, and warned his audience
no longer to allow it to remain the purgatory of t