THE FISCAL QUESTION 129 



roused the nation to self-inquiry he has done well. But 

 the inquiry has stopped short at the surface. It has 

 reached neither the real needs of the country nor their true 

 remedy. By an error which is natural to a mind supremely 

 equipped both by natural endowment and by experience 

 for the arena of the competitive industries, but sustained 

 and enriched by no historical or philosophical background, 

 he has treated the State as if it were a business concern and 

 nothing more ; and he has confined the thoughts of the 

 people, as well as his own, to the question of commercial 

 methods. The result is that both sides of the great con- 

 troversy have immensely exaggerated the significance of 

 these methods, extending them all around our mental 

 horizon. 



The State, said the wise Burke, ' ' ought not to be con- 

 sidered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in 

 a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some 

 other such low concern, to be taken up for a little tem- 

 porary interest and to be dissolved by the fancy of the 

 parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, be- 

 cause it is not a partnership in things subservient only to 

 the gross animal existence of a temporary or perishable 

 nature. It is a partnership in all science ; a partnership 

 in all art ; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfec- 

 tion. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be 

 obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not 

 only between those who are living but between those who 

 are dead and those who are to be born." 1 



Like the contemporaries of Burke, we seem to lack this 

 larger vision and to have lost the larger courage which 

 always inspires a progressive nation to seek prosperity by 

 1 Reflection! on the Revolution in France. 



