hemence of Robert Lowe. "If," he asked,
"you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of
intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent
people, where will you go to look for them--to the top or to the
bottom?" Well might Bishop Wilberforce report to a friend, "It was
enough to make the flesh creep to hear Bob Lowe's prognostications
for the future of England."

Next year the artisans got the vote, though the great Lord Shaftesbury,
who knew more than most of his peers about working-men, plainly
told the House of Lords that "a large proportion of the working
classes have a deep and solemn conviction that property is not
distributed as property ought to be; that some checks ought to
be kept upon the accumulation of property in single hands; and
that to take away by legislation that which is in excess with a
view to bestowing it on those who have less, is not a breach of
any law, human or Divine."

Yet once more. When in 1885 the agricultural labourers (of whom a
Tory M.P. said that they were no fitter for a vote than the beasts
they tended), were admitted to the franchise, the same terrors
shook the squirearchy. We were warned that the land would soon be
broken up into small holdings; that sport would become impossible;
and that "the stately homes of England" must all be closed, for
lack of money to keep them open. The country, we were told, had
seen its best days, and "Merry England" had vanished for ever.

I only recall these "dissolving throes," real or imaginary, because
I fancy that just now they are again making themselves felt, and
perhaps with better reason than ever before in our history. People
who venture to look ahead are asking themselves this question: If
this war goes on much longer, what sort of England will emerge?
Some are looking forward with rapture to a new heaven and a new
earth; others dread the impending destruction "of a social order
they loved." Can we not trace something of this dread in Lord
Lansdowne's much-canvassed letter? He is one of the most patriotic
and most experienced men in public life; he "looks on the rushing
decay of the times which sheltered his youth"; and it may well be
that he is striving to avert what seems to him a social catastrophe.

IV

_INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER_

As a rule, I call a spade a spade. When I mean _The Times_, I say
_The Times_, and I condemn the old-fashioned twaddle of talking
about "a morning contemporary." But