1 86 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book ii to remonetise silver. The issues raised, how- 

 hapter 4 ever, both by the free traders and the bimetallists, 

 are of a kind so complicated that exceedingly few 

 people would be able even to describe their nature 

 clearly enough to satisfy the most lenient examiner 

 who should set them a paper in economics. The 

 majority of those who declared for bimetallism in 

 America had as little to do with forming their own 

 opinions as the little boys would have in a pre- 

 paratory school who should shout their approval of 

 some new emendation made by one of their masters 

 of a corrupt passage in Pindar ; nor does that 

 British opinion in favour of free trade principles 

 which has caused our Government to adopt them, 

 and would hinder or prevent their repudiation, 

 rest in the minds of the majority of those who 

 hold it, on any larger amount of original thought 

 or knowledge. Ninety -nine free traders out of 

 a hundred would never have been free traders at 

 all if it had not been for the oratory of Cobden. 

 The least-educated portion of the citizens of the 

 United States would never have howled themselves 

 hoarse over an intricate financial problem if it had 

 not been for the oratory and the singular activity of 

 Mr. Bryan. Indeed, what is oratory itself, which in 

 all democracies, from that of Athens downwards, has 

 been essential to the work of government, but an 

 embodied expression of the fact that the many are 

 powerless, unless here and there some thinker will 

 think for them, and give them opinions which may 

 form a mould or a nucleus for their own ? Even a 



