OPPOSITION TO HOME RULE 183 



would be difficult to find a more direct proof than this 

 of the authority which attached in the States to his 

 views. 



In the letter under discussion it will be seen that he 

 declined to make the statement desired, but he afterwards 

 consented to publication of the letter itself : — 



" I am as much opposed to the Home Rule Scheme as any 

 one can possibly be, and if I were a political man I would fight 

 against it as long as I had any breath left in me ; but I have 

 carefully kept out of the political field all my life, and it is too 

 late for me now to think of entering it. 



" Anxious watching of the course of affairs for many years 

 past has persuaded me that nothing short of some sharp and 

 sweeping national misfortune will convince the majority of our 

 countrymen that government by average opinion is merely a cir- 

 cuitous method of going to the devil ; and that those who profess 

 to lead but in fact slavishly follow this average opinion, are 

 simply the fastest runners and the loudest squeakers of the herd, 

 which is rushing blindly down to its destruction. 



" It is the electorate, and especially the Liberal electorate, 

 which is responsible for the present state of things. It has no 

 political education. It knows well enough that two and two 

 won't make five in a ledger, and that sentimental stealing in 

 private life is not to be tolerated ; but it has not been taught the 

 great lesson in history that there are like verities in national life, 

 and hence it easily falls a prey to any clever and copious fallacy- 

 monger who appeals to its great heart instead of reminding it of 

 its weak head. 



" Politicians have gone on flattering and cajoling this chaos of 

 political incompetence until the just penalty of believing their own 

 fictions has befallen them, and the average Member of Parliament 

 is conscientiously convinced that it is his duty, not to act for his 

 constituents to the best of his judgment, but to do exactly what 

 they, or rather the small minority which drives them, tells him 

 to do. 



" Have we a real statesman, a man of the calibre of Pitt or 

 Burke, to say nothing of Strafford or Pym, who will stand 

 up and tell his countrymen that this disruption of the union is 

 nothing but a cowardly wickedness — an act bad in itself, fraught 



