voters.  Protection in the form of the corn laws was unpopular in England; this, however, cannot with fairness be put down to the moral or intellectual credit of the multitude.  The corn laws were disliked because they enhanced the price of bread.  Even as it was, the Chartists used to interrupt the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, and it is an idle fancy that the dangers of a protective tariff are in themselves more patent to the electors of England than to the democracy of France or of America.  Trades Unionism is in many of its features a form of protectionism.  If again we turn to foreign policy, we must read history with a strangely perverted eye if we hold that the people have in general condemned wars, whether just or unjust.  There is hardly to be named a great war in which England has been engaged which has not engaged popular support.  In the struggle with the American Colonies the warlike sentiment of the people was undoubtedly opposed to the prudence and justice of a small body of enlightened men, who found their representative in Burke.  In England, it is true, no great change of law or of policy can in general be effected until it has in some sort been sanctioned by popular approval.  But to attribute every advance, or even most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the notion that because every statute is passed with the assent of the Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act passed in her name.  To maintain, as every man versed in history must maintain, that ignorance must from the necessity of the case be the ally of prejudice, is not to deny to the people their merits or virtues.  If ignorance were wisdom as well as bliss, every effort in favour of popular education were folly.  No doubt the rich or educated classes are slaves to delusions from which the crowd are free.  This concession falls far short of the doctrine that legislative progress is mainly due to the soundness of popular feeling.  That this doctrine should in one shape or another have been promulgated, and have formed the basis of an argument for a complicated change in the constitution, is a sign that the advocates of the innovation or reform feel instinctively that the strength of their case lies in its coincidence with dominant sentiment.  Nor is it hard to see what is the condition of sentiment or opinion which favours the doctrine of Home Rule.  The matter, however, is of such importance as well to repay careful examination.

For the first time in the course of English history, national policy has passed under the sway, not so much of democratic convictions, but of a far stronger power—­democratic sentiment.  Every idea which can rightly or wrongly be called popular, commands, even among persons who deem themselves Conservatives, ready assent or superstitious deference.  Hence flow (be it at once conceded) some of the best characteristics