them to the
deliberate intention of particular fools and knaves. This indicates
Fitzjames's position at the time. He was fully conscious of the
administrative abuses assailed, and was as ardent on law reform as
became a disciple of Bentham. But he could not accept the support of men
who thought that judicious reform could be suggested by rough
caricatures, and that all difficulties could be appreciated by the
first petty tradesmen who encountered an incidental grievance or by such
summary remedies as were to be suggested off-hand by anonymous
correspondents. The levity, the ignorance, the hasty and superficial
irritability of these reformers, their enormous conceit and
imperturbable self-complacency revolted him. English life he declared in
the 'Edinburgh Review' is 'too active, English spheres of action too
wide, English freedom too deeply rooted, to be endangered by a set of
bacchanals drunk with green tea and not protected by petticoats.
Boundless luxury,' he thought, 'and thirst for excitement, have raised a
set of writers who show a strong sympathy for all that is most opposite
to the very foundations of English life.' The 'Saturday Review' articles
enlarge upon the same theme. He will not accept legislators whose
favourite costume is the cap and bells, or admit that men who 'can make
silly women cry can, therefore, dictate principles of law and
government.' The defects of our system are due to profound historical
causes. 'Freedom and law and established rules have their difficulties,'
not perceptible to 'feminine, irritable, noisy minds, always clamouring
and shrieking for protection and guidance.' The end to which Dickens
would really drive us would be 'pure despotism. No debates to worry
effeminate understandings, no laws to prevent judges from deciding
according to their own inclination, no forms to prevent officials from
dealing with their neighbours as so many parcels of ticketed goods.'[70]

These utterances show the combination of the old Puritanic leaven, to
which all trifling and levity is hateful, and the strong patriotic
sentiment, to which Dickens in one direction and the politics of Cobden
and Bright in the other, appeared as different manifestations of a
paltry and narrow indifference to all the great historic aims of the
national life. Now, and to some degree always, he strongly sympathised
with the patriotism represented by Macaulay.

I need only notice at present certain theological implications