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TILE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



so large and generous a faith. The Tiehborne 

 case, referred to by Lord Arthur, appears to me, 

 in spite of the sarcasm of Mr. F. Harrison, to be 

 singularly significant. The "claimant" was up- 

 held, followed, admired, and stuck to, with strange 

 enthusiasm by the masses, and not by those of 

 London only. His advocate, with even less ra- 

 tionality, was almost more noisily applauded. 

 Note, too, the analysis, which can scarcely be 

 questioned, of the " claimant's " worshipers 

 among the crowd. Half of them gave the meas- 

 ure of their reasoning capacity by retaining their 

 belief and their adherence in defiance of the 

 crushing demolition of his case by the Lord 

 Chief-Justice; the other half, who probably 

 never believed in the justice of his claims at all, 

 were his loyal adherents to the end, and would 

 have given him a verdict without turning in the 

 jury-box (while by implication avowing its in- 

 equity), because cordially admiring " the pluck of 

 a butcher's son for standing up with such gallantry 

 against a baronet.' 1 '' 



Nor, again, can I observe that the working- 

 classes have of late shown much of the readiness 

 to be guided by the advice and arguments even 

 of their own admitted friends and recognized 

 leaders, on questions relating to their own inter- 

 ests, and where they might be expected to be 

 acquainted with the facts of the case, and to be 

 competent to form a sagacious judgment. I do 

 not refer to instances, too many and surprising 

 enough, alas ! where trades-union chiefs have 

 taken up the shallowest doctrines and the most 

 untenable positions. I speak of the many occa- 

 sions of disputes about wages which have oc- 

 curred during the last two disastrous years, 

 when the choice of the men lay between work on 

 the masters' terms or no work at all ; when the 

 leaders, who saw this, counseled submission, but 

 the men, who could scarcely deny the truth, 

 found the truth too unwelcome to be candidly 

 recognized ; nay, more, when meetings were held 

 to which most of the attendants went with the 

 intention of accepting the inevitable and closing 

 with the offered rates, but when this wholesome 

 temper was entirely turned aside and changed 

 into bitterness by the firebrand speech of some 

 reckless agitator, and a prolongation of the strike 

 was carried by an overpowering vote. And this 

 observation reminds us of another danger which 

 reflective public men should be the last to ignore 

 or undervalue — the peculiar pronencss, namely, 

 of popular assemblies to be swayed by oratory 

 rather than by reasoning and knowledge : a 

 pronencss to which they are liable just in propor- 



tion as they are popular (i. e., composed of the 

 excitable and uncultivated masses) — just in pro- 

 portion, one might possibly add, as the senti- 

 ments involved and appealed to are generous and 

 sympathetic. 1 Susceptibility to eloquence is the 

 notorious danger of liberal constitutions and 

 democratic assemblies, perhaps we might say 

 their besetting sin ; and eloquence is mightier 

 far when championing passionate emotion than 

 when pleading the cause of sober wisdom ; 

 mightier, too — and this is a matter for grave 

 consideration — when giving utterance to the 

 awakened animosities and prejudices of the hour 

 than when anxiously forecasting graver and re- 

 moter but no less certain issues. 



" This is no discussion about a Reform Bill," 

 says Mr. Harrison, " nor are we settling the re- 

 spective claims of popular or oligarchic govern- 

 ment." I beg to remind him that the discussion 

 grew out of the proposal for a new reform bill, 

 and the special proposition we are criticising, its 

 soundness or unsoundness, directly involves the 

 justice of those claims. Mr. Gladstone's entire 

 argument implies this ; so does Mr. Hutton's skill- 

 ful and ingenious historical retrospect of the last 

 seventy years. The very proposition itself ap- 

 pears to have been announced in so broad a form 

 distinctly in order to cover and to justify a large 

 modification of our parliamentary institutions in 

 a popular direction, and to discredit oligarchical 

 pretensions. Both interlocutors argue that the 

 experience of the past may be taken as a guaran- 

 tee against the foreseen or fancied perils of the 

 future — that, because our previous extensions of 

 the franchise have brought us no evil, but, on the 

 contrary, good, therefore we may venture without 

 anxiety — nay, with sanguine confidence — on an 

 extension yet wider and more sweeping. 



1 It may, perhaps, be not quite safe to appeal to the 

 sentiments of the masses during the phase of popular 

 excitement through which we are now passing ; but 

 it is questionable whether the majority of the people— 

 of those whom we may speak of as the unpropet tied 

 classes— is not to he ranged on that which Mr. Glad- 

 stone has taken such effective pains to persuade us is 

 the wrong and the unrighteous side. "Society," we 

 know— the idler and military ranks, the " upper ten 

 thousand," etc.— incline mainly and passionately to 

 the Turkish side; the middle, the intellectual, the 

 commercial classes, are chiefly Russian, or at least 

 hostile to the Porte ; hut is it not the case, especially 

 in the metropolis, that far the larger portion of those 

 below them, in spite of Bulgarian atrocities, iu dis- 

 regard of Mr. Gladstone's campaign, are still the 

 vehement backers of the most recklessly warlike and 

 Chauvinist minister we have had for long, in hie 

 policy of involving ua in hostilities for the mainte- 

 nance of about the worst government with which we 

 have ever been mixed up ? 



