MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF LETTERS. 



21 



choose to submit to his sultanic despotism were 

 shut out from the only pulpit whence they were 

 sure of addressing the congregation that they 

 wanted. In England contributors are better off; 

 and no editor of a signed periodical would feel 

 either bound or permitted to take such trouble 

 about mere wording of sentences as Gifford and 

 Jeffrey were in the habit of taking. 



There is, however, another side to this, from 

 an editor's point of view. With responsibility — 

 not merely for commas, and niceties, and literary 

 kickshaws, but in its old sense — disappears also 

 a portion of the interest of editorial labor. One 

 would suppose it must be more interesting to 

 command a man-of-war than a trading-vessel ; it 

 would be more interesting to lead a regiment 

 than to keep a tilting-yard. But the times are 

 not ripe for such enterprises. Of literary ability 

 of a good and serviceable kind there is a hun- 

 dred or five hundred times more in the country 

 than there was when Jeffrey, Smith, Brougham, 

 and Horner, devised their review in a ninth- 

 story in Edinburgh seventy-six years ago. It is 

 the cohesion of a political creed that is gone, and 

 the strength and fervor of a political school. 

 The principles that inspired that group of strong 

 men have been worked out. After their reforms 

 had been achieved, the next great school was 

 economic, and, though it produced a fine orator, 

 its work was at no time literary. The Manches- 

 ter school, with all their shortcomings, had at 

 least the signal distinction of attaching their 

 views on special political questions to a general 

 and presiding conception of the modern phase of 

 civilization, as industrial and pacific. The next 

 party of advance, when it is formed, will certain- 

 ly borrow from Cobden and Bright their hatred 

 of war and their hatred of the silly policy of im- 

 perialism. After the sagacity and enlightenment 

 of this school came the school of persiflage. A 

 knot of vigorous and brilliant men toward 1856 

 rallied round the late editor of the Saturday Re- 

 view — and a strange chief he was for such a 

 group — but their flag was that of the Red Rover. 

 They gave Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but 

 perhaps at the same time helped to some degree 

 — with other far deeper and stronger forces — to 

 produce that skeptical and centrifugal state of 

 mind which now tends to nullify organized liberal- 

 ism and paralyze the spirit of improvement. The 

 Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and after- 

 ward in a secondary degree by Mr. John Mill, 

 had pushed a number of political improvements 

 in the radical and democratic direction during 

 the time when the Edinburgh so powerfully rep- 



resented more orthodox liberalism. They were 

 the last important group of men who started to- 

 gether from a set of common principles, accepted 

 a common programme of practical applications, 

 and set to work in earnest and with due order and 

 distribution of parts to advocate the common cause. 

 At present there is no similar agreement ei- 

 ther among the younger men in Parliament, or 

 among a sufficiently numerous group of writers 

 outside of Parliament. The Edinburgh Review- 

 ers were most of them students of the university 

 of that city. The Westminster Reviewers had all 

 sat at the feet of Bentham. Each group had 

 thus a common doctrine and a positive doctrine. 

 La practical politics it does not much matter by 

 what different roads men have traveled to a given 

 position. But in an organ intended to lead pub- 

 lic opinion toward certain changes, or to hold it 

 steadfast against wayward gusts of passion, its 

 ^strength would be increased a hundred-fold if all 

 the writers in it were inspired by that thorough 

 unity of conviction which comes from sincerely 

 accepting a common set of principles to start 

 from, and reaching practical conclusions by the 

 same route. We are probably not very far from 

 a time when such a group might form itself, and 

 its work would for some years lie iu the forma- 

 tion of a general body of opinion, rather than in 

 practical realization of this or that measure. The 

 success of the French Republic, the peaceful order 

 of the United States, perhaps some trouble within 

 our own borders, will lead men with open minds 

 to such a conception of a high and stable type of 

 national life as will unite a sufficient number of 

 them in a common project for pressing with sys- 

 tematic iteration for a complete set of organic 

 changes. A country with such a land system, 

 such an electoral system, such a monarchy, as 

 ours, has a trying time before it. Those will be 

 doing good service who shall unite to prepare 

 opinion for the inevitable changes. At the pres- 

 ent moment the only motto that can be inscribed 

 on the flag of a liberal review is the general de- 

 vice of Progress, each writer interpreting it in 

 his own sense, and within such limits as he may 

 set for himself. For such a state of things sig- 

 nature is the natural condition, and an editor, 

 even of a signed review, would, I suppose, not 

 decline to accept the account of his function 

 which we find Jeffrey giving to Mr. Napier : 

 " There are three legitimate considerations by ^ 

 which you should be guided in your conduct as I 

 editor generally, and particularly as to the admis- 

 sion or rejection of important articles of a politi- 

 cal sort : 1. The effect of your decision on the 



