ey are subject industrially to conditions which take the life and
heart out of them. A nation as a whole cannot be in the full sense free
while it fears another or gives cause of fear to another. The social
problem must be viewed as a whole. We touch here the greatest weakness
in modern reform movements. The spirit of specialism has invaded
political and social activity, and in greater and greater degree men
consecrate their whole energy to a particular cause to the almost
cynical disregard of all other considerations. "Not such the help, nor
these the defenders" which this moment of the world's progress needs.
Rather we want to learn our supreme lesson from the school of Cobden.
For them the political problem was one, manifold in its ramifications
but undivided in its essence. It was a problem of realizing liberty. We
have seen reason to think that their conception of liberty was too thin,
and that to appreciate its concrete content we must understand it as
resting upon mutual restraint and value it as a basis of mutual aid.
For us, therefore, harmony serves better as a unifying conception. It
remains for us to carry it through with the same logical cogency, the
same practical resourcefulness, the same driving force that inspired the
earlier Radicals, that gave fire to Cobden's statistics, and lent
compelling power to the eloquence of Bright. We need less of the
fanatics of sectarianism and more of the unifying mind. Our reformers
must learn to rely less on the advertising value of immediate success
and more on the deeper but less striking changes of practice or of
feeling, to think less of catching votes and more of convincing opinion.
We need a fuller co-operation among those of genuine democratic feeling
and more agreement as to the order of reform. At present progress is
blocked by the very competition of many causes for the first place in
the advance. Here, again, devolution will help us, but what would help
still more would be a clearer sense of the necessity of co-operation
between all who profess and call themselves democrats, based on a fuller
appreciation of the breadth and the depth of their own meaning. The
advice seems cold to the fiery spirits, but they may come to learn that
the vision of justice in the wholeness of her beauty kindles a passion
that may not flare up into moments of dramatic scintillation, but burns
with the enduring glow of the central heat.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] I need hardly add that fina