s that we were the victims of a
profound delusion. He warned us that the great Democracy on which we
relied as our unchangeable foundation would give way under our feet. He
pointed out that Labour had no more reason to expect its salvation from
Liberalism than from Toryism. He insisted that all our political reform
was mere machinery; that the end and object of politics was Social
Reform; and that the promise of the future was for those who should help
us to be better, wiser, and happier; for those who concerned themselves
rather with the product of the machine than with the machine itself; who
were not satisfied by eternally taking it to pieces and putting it
together again, but who wanted to know what sort of stuff it was, when
perfected, to turn out. He suggested that "the present troubled state of
our social life" had at least something to do with "the thirty years'
blind worship of their idols by our Liberal friends," and that it threw
some doubt on "the sufficiency of their worship." "It is not," he said,
"fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for Free Trade, Extension of the
Suffrage, and Abolition of Church Rates, instead of graver social ends;
but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe,
with our social condition what it is, that they have performed a great,
a heroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty
years, with these Liberal nostrums."

And, while our new critic was thus disdainful of much that we held
sacred, of political machinery and logical government, and individual
liberty of speech and action, he recalled our attention to certain
objects of reverence which we, or at least some of us, had forgotten. He
insisted on the immense value of history and continuity in the political
life of a nation. He extolled (though the words were not his) the
"institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the
dead." He affirmed that external beauty, stateliness, splendour,
gracious manners, were indispensable elements of civilization, and that
these were the contributions which Aristocracy made to the welfare of
the State. He reminded us that the true greatness of a nation was to be
found in its culture, its ideals, its sentiment for beauty, its
performances in the intellectual and moral spheres--not in its supply of
coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its
multiplication of railways. Above all--and this was to some of our Party
th