s seem so
much less than those of our fathers. When we have a definite end in
view, which we know we want, and which we think we know how to obtain,
we can act well enough. The campaigns of our soldiers are as energetic
as any campaigns ever were; the speculations of our merchants have
greater promptitude, greater audacity, greater vigour than any such
speculations ever had before. In old times a few ideas got possession
of men and communities, but this is happily now possible no longer. We
see how incomplete these old ideas were; how almost by chance one
seized on one nation, and another on another; how often one set of men
have persecuted another set for opinions on subjects of which neither,
we now perceive, knew anything. It might be well if a greater number of
effectual demonstrations existed among mankind; but while no such
demonstrations exist, and while the evidence which completely convinces
one man seems to another trifling and insufficient, let us recognise
the plain position of inevitable doubt. Let us not be bigots with a
doubt, and persecutors without a creed. We are beginning to bee this,
and we are railed at for so beginning. But it is a great benefit, and
it is to the incessant prevalence of detective discussion that our
doubts are due; and much of that discussion is due to the long
existence of a government requiring constant debates, written and oral.

This is one of the unrecognised benefits of free government, one of the
modes in which it counteracts the excessive inherited impulses of
humanity. There is another also for which it does the same, but which I
can only touch delicately, and which at first sight will seem
ridiculous. The most successful races, other things being equal, are
those which multiply the fastest. In the conflicts of mankind numbers
have ever been a great power. The most numerous group has always had an
advantage over the less numerous, and the fastest breeding group has
always tended to be the most numerous. In consequence, human nature has
descended into a comparatively uncontentious civilisation, with a
desire far in excess of what is needed; with a 'felt want,' as
political economists would say, altogether greater than the 'real
want.' A walk in London is all which is necessary to establish this.
'The great sin of great cities' is one vast evil consequent upon it.
And who is to reckon up how much these words mean? How many spoiled
lives, how many broken hearts, how many wast