ing the
cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole
benefactors of the world."

This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an
estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have
been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more
unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to
the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original
scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle,
prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive
policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought
at work in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school surveyed
society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of
political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human
nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with
the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities.
Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need
of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or
that general principles are now more generally settled even among
members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of
to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove
even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the
transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of
land; the relations between the Government at home and our adventurers
abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free
contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts
of minorities; these are only some of the questions that time and
circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and
legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics, the problems are
as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe for realisation. We shall need
to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties.
Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and
earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good
end.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley

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