The fact, of course, that each step towards either Socialism or Individualism changes the character of the other elements in the problem, or the fact that an invention like printing, or representative government, or Civil Service examinations, or the Utilitarian philosophy, may make it possible to provide greatly increased satisfaction both to Socialist and Individualist desires, complicates the question, but does not alter its quantitative character.  The essential point is that in every case in which a political thinker is able to adopt what Professor Marshall calls the quantitative method of reasoning, his vocabulary and method, instead of constantly suggesting a false simplicity, warn him that every individual instance with which he deals is different from any other, that any effect is a function of many variable causes, and, therefore, that no estimate of the result of any act can be accurate unless all its conditions and their relative importance are taken into account.

But how far are such quantitative methods possible when a statesman is dealing, neither with an obviously quantitative problem, like the building of halls or schools, nor with an attempt to give quantitative meaning to abstract terms like Socialism or Individualism, but with the enormous complexity of responsible legislation?

In approaching this question we shall be helped if we keep before us a description of the way in which some one statesman has, in fact, thought of a great constitutional problem.

Take, for instance, the indications which Mr. Morley gives of the thinking done by Gladstone on Home Rule during the autumn and winter of 1885-86.  Gladstone, we are told, had already, for many years past, pondered anxiously at intervals about Ireland, and now he describes himself as ‘thinking incessantly about the matter’ (vol. iii. p. 268), and ‘preparing myself by study and reflection’ (p. 273).

He has first to consider the state of feeling in England and Ireland, and to calculate to what extent and under what influences it may be expected to change.  As to English feeling, ‘what I expect,’ he says, ’is a healthy slow fermentation in many minds working towards the final product’ (p. 261).  The Irish desire for self-government, on the other hand, will not change, and must be taken, within the time-limit of his problem, as ‘fixed’ (p. 240).  In both England and Ireland, however, he believes that ‘mutual attachment’ may grow (p. 292).

Before making up his mind in favour of some kind of Home Rule, he examines every thinkable alternative, especially the development of Irish County Government, or a Federal arrangement in which all three of the united kingdoms would be concerned.  Here and there he finds suggestions in the history of Austria-Hungary, of Norway and Sweden, or of the ‘colonial type’ of government.  Nearly every day he reads Burke, and exclaims ‘what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America’ (p. 280).  He gets much help