“There is some resemblance between the period of political reform in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation in the sixteenth.  Now as then the multitude of followers must be distinguished from the smaller group of leaders.  Now as then there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall prevail....  But behind these, now as then, there is a crowd which has imbibed a delight in change for its own sake, who would reform the Suffrage, or the House of Lords, or the Land Laws, or the Union with Ireland, in precisely the same spirit in which the mob behind the reformers of religion broke the nose of a saint in stone, made a bonfire of copes and surplices, or shouted for the government of the Church by presbyteries” (p. 130).

We should wish to look at this remarkable picture a little more closely.  That there exist Anabaptists in the varied hosts of the English reformers is true.  The feats of the Social Democrats, however, at the recent election hardly convince us that they have very formidable multitudes behind them.  Nor is it they who concern themselves with such innovations as those which Sir Henry Maine specifies.  The Social Democrats, even of the least red shade, go a long way beyond and below such trifles as Suffrage or the Upper House.  To say of the crowd who do concern themselves with reform of the Suffrage, or the Land Laws, or the House of Lords, or the Union with Ireland, that they are animated by a delight in change for its own sake, apart from the respectable desire to apply a practical remedy to a practical inconvenience, is to show a rather highflying disregard of easily ascertainable facts.  The Crowd listen with interest to talk about altering the Land Laws, because they suspect the English land system to have something to do with the unprosperous condition of the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer; with the depopulation of the country and the congestion in the towns; with the bad housing of the poor, and with various other evils which they suppose themselves to see staring them daily in the face.  They may be entirely mistaken alike In their estimate of mischief and their hope of mitigation.  But they are not moved by delight in change for its own sake.  When the Crowd sympathises with disapproval of the House of Lords, it is because the legislative performances of that body are believed to have impeded useful reforms in the past, to be impeding them now, and to be likely to impede them in the future.  This may be a sad misreading of the history of the last fifty years, and a painfully prejudiced anticipation of the next fifty.  At any rate, it is in intention a solid and practical appeal to experience and results, and has no affinity to a restless love of change for the sake of change.  No doubt, in the progress of the controversy, the assailants of the House of Lords attack the principle of birth.  But the principle of birth is not attacked from the a priori