lopement of humour went a moderation won from humour,
whether in matters of religion, of politics, or society, a literary
courtesy and reserve, a well-bred temperance and modesty of tone and
phrase. It was in the hands of the town-bred essayist that our
literature first became urbane.

[Sidenote: The brutality of Politics.]

It is strange to contrast this urbanity of literature with the savage
ferocity which characterized political controversy in the England of the
Revolution and the Georges. Never has the strife of warring parties been
carried on with so utter an absence of truth or fairness; never has the
language of political opponents stooped to such depths of coarseness and
scurrility. From the age of Bolingbroke to the age of Burke the gravest
statesmen were not ashamed to revile one another with invective only
worthy of the fish-market. And outside the legislature the tone of
attack was even more brutal. Grub Street ransacked the whole vocabulary
of abuse to find epithets for Walpole. Gay amidst general applause set
the statesmen of his day on the public stage in the guise of highwaymen
and pickpockets. "It is difficult to determine," said the witty
playwright, "whether the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the
road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen." Much of this
virulence sprang, no doubt, from a real contempt of the selfishness and
corruption which disgraced the politics of the time, but it was far from
being wholly due to this. In selfishness and corruption indeed the
statesmen of the Georgian era were no worse than their predecessors;
while in fidelity to principles and a desire for the public good they
stood immeasurably above them. The standard of political action had
risen with the Revolution. Cynic as was Walpole, jobber as was
Newcastle, it would be absurd to compare their conception of public
duty, their conduct of public affairs, with that of the Danbys and
Sunderlands of the Restoration.

[Sidenote: Public opinion.]

What had really happened was a change not in the attitude of statesmen
towards the nation, but in the attitude of the nation at large towards
the class that governed it. From the triumph of Puritanism in 1640 the
supreme, irresistible force in English politics had been national
opinion. It created the Long Parliament. It gave it its victory over the
Church and the Crown. When a strange turn of events placed Puritanism in
antagonism to it, it crushed Puritanism as