libel," while his bookshop in Holborn was as frequently
ransacked by the authorities.

Spence died in 1814, and the movement for abolishing the landlords in
favour of common ownership languished and stopped. The interesting thing
about Spence's "Plan" is its anticipation of Henry George's propaganda for
a Single Tax on Land Values, and the extinction of all other methods of
raising national revenue, a propaganda that, in a modified form for the
taxation of land values, has already earned the approval of the House of
Commons.

PRACTICAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS

Because we insist on the experimental character of our British political
progress, and the steady refusal to accept speculative ideas and _a priori_
deductions in politics, it does not follow that the services of the
idealist are to be unrecognised.

The work of the idealist, whether he is a writer or a man of action--and
sometimes, as in the case of Mazzini, he is both--is to stir the souls of
men and shake them out of sluggish torpor, or rouse them from gross
absorption in personal gain, and from dull, self-satisfied complacency. He
is the prophet, the agitator, the pioneer, and after him follow the
responsible statesmen, who rarely see far ahead or venture on new paths.
Once or twice in the world's history the practical statesman is an
idealist, as Abraham Lincoln was, but the combination of qualities is
unusual. The political idealist gets his vision in solitary places, the
democratic statesman gets his experience of men by rubbing shoulders with
the crowd.

A democratic nation must have its seers and prophets, lest it forget its
high calling to press forward, and so sink in the slough of contented ease.
The preacher of ideals is the architect of a nation's hopes and desires,
and the fulfilment of these hopes and desires will depend on the wisdom of
its political builders--the practical politicians. Often enough the
structural alterations are so extensive that the architect does not
recognise his plan; and that is probably as it should be; for it is quite
likely that the architect left out of account so simple a matter as the
staircase in his house beautiful, and the builder is bound to adapt the
plan to ordinary human needs.

The idealist has a faith in the future of his cause that exceeds the
average faith, and in his sure confidence fails to understand why his
neighbours will not follow at his call, or move more rapidly; and so he
fails as a