wisdom of popularly elected chambers.”  We are not surprised at the misgiving.  But after reasonable attention to facts, we cannot recall any publicist, whom it could be worth while to spend five minutes in refuting, who has ever said that popularly elected chambers are absolutely wise.  Again, we should like the evidence for the statement that popularly elected Houses “do not nowadays appeal to the wise deduction from experience, as old as Aristotle, which no student of constitutional history will deny, that the best constitutions are those in which there is a large popular element.  It is a singular proof of the widespread influence of the speculations of Rousseau that although very few First Chambers really represent the entire community, nevertheless in Europe they almost invariably claim to reflect it, and as a consequence they assume an air of divinity, which if it rightfully belonged to them would be fatal to all argument for a Second Chamber.”  That would be very important If it were true.  But is it true that First Chambers assume an air of divinity?  Or is such an expression a “burlesque of the real argument?” A reasonable familiarity with the course of the controversy in France, where the discussion has been abundant, and in England, where it has been comparatively meagre, leaves me, for one, entirely ignorant that this claim for divinity, or anything like it, is ever heard in the debate.  The most powerful modern champion of popular government was Gambetta.  Did Gambetta consider First Chambers divine?  On the contrary, some of the most strenuous pleas for the necessity of a Second Chamber are to be found precisely in the speeches of Gambetta (e.g. his speech at Grenoble, in the autumn of 1878, Discours viii. 270, etc.).  Abstract thinking is thinking withdrawn from the concrete and particular facts.  But the abstract thinker should not withdraw too far.

Sir Henry Maine speaks (p. 185) of “the saner political theorist, who holds that in secular matters it is better to walk by sight than by faith.”  He allows that a theorist of this kind, as regards popularly elected chambers, “will be satisfied that experience has shown the best Constitutions to be those in which the popular element is large, and he will readily admit that, as the structure of each society of men slowly alters, it is well to alter and amend the organisation by which this element makes itself felt.”  Sir Henry Maine would surely have done better service in this grave and difficult discussion, if he had dealt with views which he mistrusts, as they are really held and expressed by sane theorists, and not by insane theorists out of sight.  In France, a hundred years ago, from causes that are capable of explanation, the democracy of sentiment swept away the democracy of utility.  In spite of casual phrases in public discussion, and in spite of the incendiary trash of Red journalists without influence, it is the democracy of reason, experience, and utility that is now in the ascendant, both in France and elsewhere.