of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain
dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new
ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at
one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an
intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs
touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the
positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon thought of men of
letters and savans:--"Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut
entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer
a faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views
about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if
your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as
we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful
defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be
regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here
on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for
suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment
of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to
suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there
was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than
fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution
to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early
apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the
social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing
twenty years ago, and it would be sufficient justification for the
past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the
process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements
of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they
find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a
popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, "as if you believed
that everything is bad." "Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that
everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit
which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless
complaint and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been
taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such
Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remember