t was able to live happily in spite of his
anticipations. The dean was one of those old-world politicians,--we
meet them every day, and they are generally pleasant people,--who
enjoy the politics of the side to which they belong without any
special belief in them. If pressed hard they will almost own that
their so-called convictions are prejudices. But not for worlds would
they be rid of them. When two or three of them meet together, they
are as freemasons, who are bound by a pleasant bond which separates
them from the outer world. They feel among themselves that everything
that is being done is bad,--even though that everything is done by
their own party. It was bad to interfere with Charles, bad to endure
Cromwell, bad to banish James, bad to put up with William. The House
of Hanover was bad. All interference with prerogative has been bad.
The Reform bill was very bad. Encroachment on the estates of the
bishops was bad. Emancipation of Roman Catholics was the worst of
all. Abolition of corn-laws, church-rates, and oaths and tests were
all bad. The meddling with the Universities has been grievous. The
treatment of the Irish Church has been Satanic. The overhauling of
schools is most injurious to English education. Education bills and
Irish land bills were all bad. Every step taken has been bad. And yet
to them old England is of all countries in the world the best to live
in, and is not at all the less comfortable because of the changes
that have been made. These people are ready to grumble at every boon
conferred on them, and yet to enjoy every boon. They know, too, their
privileges, and, after a fashion, understand their position. It is
picturesque, and it pleases them. To have been always in the right
and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under
persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism,--and yet
never to lose anything, not even position or public esteem, is
pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does
one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession that a man can have.
There is a large body of such men in England, and, personally, they
are the very salt of the nation. He who said that all Conservatives
are stupid did not know them. Stupid Conservatives there may
be,--and there certainly are very stupid Radicals. The well-educated,
widely-read Conservative, who is well assured that all good things
are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the