Contemporary Evolution. 



cident can beneficial action directly result from erroneous 

 judgments. 



How easily erroneous sociological judgments may be 

 formed by the most able and generally best informed men 

 recent events make singularly plain to us. 



Those who are old enough to recollect the passing of 

 the first Reform Bill, and have sympathetically followed 

 the train of political ideas thenceforward popular, can 

 hardly fail to view with amazement the more recent 

 acts or manifestoes of advocates of Liberalism. Our 

 comic journals were never tired of ridiculing everything 

 military ; free-trade and toleration were ideals, and in 

 1851 idyllic rhapsodies celebrated the speedy end of wars 

 and the apotheoses of Watt and Arkwright. 



As to religious liberty, except that feeble persecution 

 might linger in the benighted peninsulas of South-western 

 Europe, it was treason to doubt its maintenance and 

 triumphant propagation. Lord Brougham the eloquent 

 representative of the whole school spoke of the "evil 

 spirits of tyranny and persecution which haunted the long 

 night now gone down the sky" while there were few of 

 his sympathisers but would have scouted the idea that 

 theological conceptions could again have force to involve 

 Europe in bloody struggles or that the advocates of any 

 form of Christianity would be almost, tempted to de- 

 fend themselves sword in hand against the oppression of 

 their persecutors. 



