78 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; iv 



do for them, out of fear of their power, what you 

 have left undone, so long as your only motive was 

 compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. 

 And, if ignorance of everything which it is need- 

 ful a ruler should know is likely to do so much 

 harm in the governing classes of the future, why 

 is it, they ask reasonably enough, that such igno- 

 rance in the governing classes of the past has not 

 been viewed with equal horror? 



Compare the average artisan and the average 

 country squire, and it may be doubted if you will 

 find a pin to choose between the two in point of 

 ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true 

 that the ignorance is of a different sort — that the 

 class feeling is in favour of a different class — and 

 that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong- 

 headedness in each case — but it is questionable 

 if the one is either a bit better, or a bit worse, 

 than the other. The old protectionist theory is 

 the doctrine of trades unions as applied by the 

 squires, and the modern trades unionism is the 

 doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans. 

 Why should we be worse olf under one reyime than 

 under the other? 



Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy 

 to think wlu'ther it is really want of education 

 which keeps the masses away from their ministra- 

 tions — whether the most completely educated men 

 are not as opi^n to reproach un this score as the 

 workmen; and whether, perchance, this may not 



