This impoverishment of aims and depravation of principles by the triumph of the political spirit outside of its proper sphere, cannot unfortunately be restricted to any one set of people in the state.  It is something in the very atmosphere, which no sanitary cordon can limit.  Liberalism, too, would be something more generous, more attractive—­yes, and more practically effective, if its professors and champions could allow their sense of what is feasible to be refreshed and widened by a more free recognition, however private and undemonstrative, of the theoretic ideas which give their social creed whatever life and consistency it may have.  Such ideas are these:  That the conditions of the social union are not a mystery, only to be touched by miracle, but the results of explicable causes, and susceptible of constant modification:  that the thoughts of wise and patriotic men should be perpetually turned towards the improvement of these conditions in every direction:  that contented acquiescence in the ordering that has come down to us from the past is selfish and anti-social, because amid the ceaseless change that is inevitable in a growing organism, the institutions of the past demand progressive re-adaptations:  that such improvements are most likely to be secured in the greatest abundance by limiting the sphere of authority, extending that of free individuality, and steadily striving after the bestowal, so far as the nature of things will ever permit it, of equality of opportunity:  that while there is dignity in ancestry, a modern society is only safe in proportion as it summons capacity to its public counsels and enterprises; that such a society to endure must progress:  that progress on its political side means more than anything else the substitution of Justice as a governing idea, instead of Privilege, and that the best guarantee for justice in public dealings is the participation in their own government of the people most likely to suffer from injustice.  This is not an exhaustive account of the progressive doctrine, and we have here nothing to say as to its soundness.  We only submit that if those who use the watchwords of Liberalism were to return upon its principles, instead of dwelling exclusively on practical compromises, the tone of public life would be immeasurably raised.  The cause of social improvement would be less systematically balked of the victories that are best worth gaining.  Progress would mean something more than mere entrances and exits on the theatre of office.  We should not see in the mass of parliamentary candidates—­and they are important people, because nearly every Englishman with any ambition is a parliamentary candidate, actual or potential—­that grave anxiety, that sober rigour, that immense caution, which are all so really laughable, because so many of those men are only anxious lest they should make a mistake in finding out what the majority of their constituents would like them to think; only rigorous against those who are indiscreet enough to press a principle against the beck of a whip or a wire-puller; and only very cautious not so much lest their opinion should be wrong, as lest it should not pay.