onsiders he is much
above either. Our Government cannot buy for minor clerks the best
ability of the nation in the cheap currency of pure honour, and no
Government is rich enough to buy very much of it in money. Our
mercantile opportunities allure away the most ambitious minds. The
foreign bureaux are filled with a selection from the ablest men of the
nation, but only a very few of the best men approach the English
offices.

But these are neither the only nor even the principal reasons why our
public administration is not so good as, according to principle and to
the unimpeded effects of Parliamentary government, it should be. There
are two great causes at work, which in their consequences run out into
many details, but which in their fundamental nature may be briefly
described. The first of these causes is our ignorance. No polity can
get out of a nation more than there is in the nation. A free government
is essentially a government by persuasion; and as are the people to be
persuaded, and as are the persuaders, so will that government be. On
many parts of our administration the effect of our extreme ignorance is
at once plain. The foreign policy of England has for many years been,
according to the judgment now in vogue, inconsequent, fruitless,
casual; aiming at no distinct pre-imagined end, based on no steadily
pre-conceived principle. I have not room to discuss with how much or
how little abatement this decisive censure should be accepted. However,
I entirely concede that our recent foreign policy has been open to very
grave and serious blame. But would it not have been a miracle if the
English people, directing their own policy, and being what they are,
had directed a good policy? Are they not above all nations divided from
the rest of the world, insular both in situation and in mind, both for
good and for evil? Are they not out of the current of common European
causes and affairs? Are they not a race contemptuous of others? Are
they not a race with no special education or culture as to the modern
world, and too often despising such culture? Who could expect such a
people to comprehend the new and strange events of foreign places? So
far from wondering that the English Parliament has been inefficient in
foreign policy, I think it is wonderful, and another sign of the rude,
vague imagination that is at the bottom of our people, that we have
done so well as we have.

Again, the very conception of the English Consti