f we carefully observe this
precaution the individual will have room to expand, and we shall cease
to denounce all deviations from the common type.

Here Fitzjames was in partial sympathy with his antagonist. He reviewed
'Liberty' in the 'Saturday Review' upon its first appearance; and
although making certain reservations, reviewed it with warm approbation.
Mill and he were agreed upon one point. A great evil, perhaps the one
great evil of the day, as Fitzjames constantly said, is the prevalence
of a narrow and mean type of character; the decay of energy; the
excessive devotion to a petty ideal of personal comfort; and the
systematic attempt to turn our eyes away from the dark side of the
world. A smug, placid, contemptible optimism is creeping like a blight
over the face of society, and suppressing all the grander aspirations of
more energetic times. But in proportion to Fitzjames's general agreement
upon the nature of the evil was the vehemence of his dissent from the
suggested remedy. He thought that, so far from meeting the evil, it
tended directly to increase it. To diminish the strength of the social
bond would be to enervate not to invigorate society. If Mill's
principles could be adopted, everything that has stimulated men to
pursue great ends would lose its interest, and we should become a more
contemptible set of creatures than we are already.

I have tried to show how these convictions had been strengthened by
circumstances. Fitzjames's strong patriotic feeling, his pride in the
British race and the British empire, generated a special antipathy to
the school which, as he thought, took a purely commercial view of
politics; which regarded the empire as a heavy burthen, because it did
not pay its expenses, and which looked forward to a millennium of small
shopkeepers bothered by no taxes or tariffs. During the 'Pall Mall
Gazette' period he had seen such views spreading among the class newly
entrusted with power. Statesmen, in spite of a few perfunctory attempts
at better things, were mainly engaged in paltry intrigues, and in
fishing for votes by flattering fools. The only question was whether the
demagogues who were their own dupes were better or worse than the
demagogues who knew themselves to be humbugs. Carlyle's denunciations of
the imbecility of our system began to be more congenial to his temper,
and encouraged him in his heresy. Carlyle's teachings were connected
with erroneous theories indeed, and too