it are no more than ghosts of dead men, and at the hour when you seem to have reached the bay, down your ship will sink like lead or like stone to the deepest bottom.'* The mainspring of progress, as we shall see presently, he holds to be a lofty conception, on the part of man, of humanity and this lofty conception, he says, is mangled and bruised and paralyzed, by the idea which he calls palsied and crushing'† of the Christian God. On no view does Mr. Morley lay greater emphasis than this; no other excites his voice to tones so bitter and vehement. Naturally, as we have said, his mind inclines to fairness, and a judicial restraint in language; and on one or two occasions, with a visible effort, he forces himself to speak with fairness of certain individual Churchmen,‡ and with a real though a momentary comprehension of the Roman Church as an organization. But such is his underlying hatred of Christianity and of the Christian spirit, that as a rule, when he speaks of them, it entirely overmasters him. He forgets everything which in his better moments he would most wish to remember -respect for himself, respect for the feelings of others, ordinary fairness, and ordinary good manners. Subjects and names which to a large number of his readers he knows perfectly well are indescribably dear and sacred, he goes out of his way to mention with foolish insult, and in phrases where the want of taste is only equalled by the want of wit. Diderot, in a certain passage, expresses his condemnation of Christianity, in very uncompromising, but in grave and decorous terms. His most vehement sentence simply states that 'the Christian religion is to his mind the most absurd and atrocious in its dogmas.' This passage Mr. Morley quotes with an apology, fearful, he says, that it may shock devout persons.' § Such being a specimen of what he thinks likely to wound the feelings of others, it is easy to see what a passionate animosity must have filled his own mind, before he could, without any apology at all, have written as he has written about the Christian religion, himself. Thus, for instance, he classes St. Paul's conversion with one of Rousseau's fantastic transports. || But even more remarkable than this profanity are his blind onslaughts of solemn and yet unbridled vituperation. Any stick, for him, is good enough to beat the Church with, the Church, its teachers, and its teaching; but his utmost virulence is reserved for bishops and clergymen - for all Christian ministers of what kind and degree soever. He is affected by the thought of them as a

*Miscellanies,' vol. i. p. 81.

+Rousseau,' vol. ii. pp. 201, 202. See an allusion to a certain limited section of the English Church, Diderot,' vol. i. p. 221. § 'Diderot,' vol. i. p. 219. Rousseau,' vol. i. p. 136. street-boy

street-boy might be affected by the sight. They never can cross his mind without his pelting them with some intellectual garbage. He describes them as 'that organized hierarchy of ignorance and oppression in all times and places, wherever they rear their heads-the bishops and ecclesiastics of every sort and condition.' The profession of a Christian minister is, he says, 'essentially and profoundly immoral in all its forms, and no matter in connection with what school, or what dogma.' "The time will come when society will look back on the doctrine, that those who serve the altar should live by the altar, as a doctrine of barbarism and degradation.' † The clergy he represents as a set of men who make a disgraceful living in one or other of two ways-either by drugging their minds, or else by dissembling their convictions. In either case, according to him, they are the professional foes to Truth; and the higher their position, the more vehement and more wicked is their enmity, so that to give his own astounding words, 'an archbishop owes it to himself to blaspheme against reason and freedom in superlatives of malignant unction.' Elsewhere, from the curse he descends to the giggle, as when he says that he supposes the orthodox will take a vindictive pleasure in learning how sea-sick Hume was when crossing from Calais to Dover.

The reader must remember, that we are not citing these degrading exhibitions of temper, as examples of Mr. Morley's habitual mood or language. On the contrary, we cite them because they are singular exceptions. Christianity is the only subject which puts him thus beside himself; and our sole aim has been to show the extraordinary importance which, as a Radical, he attaches to its destruction, by pointing out that of all Conservative forces it is the one which rouses his hatred to far the greatest intensity.

The blindest hatred, however, originates in some reason. Let us turn to Mr. Morley's reasons for hating Christianity. In one way at least we shall find something refreshing in them; for, whether sound or not, they are at all events temperately stated. Christianity represents man as being by nature sinful, and the evils in the world as being due to the inherent imperfections in his nature. This doctrine Mr. Morley regards as entirely fatal to an efficacious doctrine of progress. He rejects Christianity because he does not believe it to be true; but he hates it because he believes it to be thus practically mischievous. Man, he says, instead of being naturally sinful, is *Rousseau,' vol. ii. p. 56. tCompromise,' p. 194. Rousseau,' vol. ii. p. 83. $ 2

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in reality an 'excellent and helpful being,' 'patient' in the search alike for beauty and for truth,' 'infinite in his capacities' alike for 'love and for pity,' and full of a sense, devout, and yet undogmatic, 'of the manifold sweetness, and glory, and awe of the universe.'* Thus agreeing with Diderot that 'human nature is good,' he declares it to be by this time a mere truism to say also with Diderot, that the evil in the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions.'† Accordingly if those amongst us who can in any way help to do so will only go on endeavouring to make these bad things better, the lot of man will be one of boundless improvableness' and of 'sublime possibilities'; and when once conceived of in this, its true light, life offers to the human soul an ideal capable of arousing the enthusiasm by which it can be realized.

Now Christianity, no doubt, is fatal to such an enthusiasm as this. It is not indeed incompatible with many moderate doctrines of progress; but the secondary importance which it attaches to the things of this world, and especially the grave imperfections which so long as this world lasts will always, according to it, vitiate human nature, reduce the possibilities of social and political progress to somewhat narrow and unimpressive dimensions, and suggest an end which is not only problematic, but at the best quite disproportionate to the trouble necessary for arriving at it. An enthusiasm for its own purposes Christianity could excite, and it excited them by touching the very depths of human emotion. Thus much Mr. Morley fully recognizes; and he recognizes also that, to achieve progress in this world, men will have to be animated by emotions at least as deep as were ever excited in them by the thought of salvation in the other. Such being the case, his contention is as follows, that though we destroy Christianity, there will still remain in man the same dormant emotion which Christianity called forth; and that the human race and its destinies, if properly presented to the mind, will give these emotions an even more adequate object, and develop them to a pitch of even greater intensity than they ever possessed or reached under the sway of the Christian teaching.

We shall have occasion presently to discuss further the religious and philosophic bases of Radicalism, as expounded by Mr. Morley, and we now pass on to his theory of Radicalism as applied to politics. We are all by this time familiar with Mr. Morley as a politician. We know him from his speeches in the House of Commons, and on the platform. We know him as a

* Rousseau,' vol. ii. pp. 201, 202.

† 'Diderot,' vol. i. p. 5. candidate

candidate on his own account, and as an agitator on his own account; and we know him also as an agitator in the retinue of Mr. Gladstone. We know him—and our knowledge of him is the clearer, because of his marked public consistency-as the extremest courtier of the multitude, the extremest advocate of appeal from wealth to poverty, from dignity to obscurity, from knowledge to ignorance: we know him for the extreme claims he makes for the Irish people, as a democracy which ought to be sovereign over its own destinies. It is therefore highly curious to turn from the conduct of the practical politician, to the inner thoughts really approved of by his reason, and to compare the esoteric principles with the exoteric adumbrations of them. The comparison is indeed surprising. Mr. Morley's theories of democracy, as calmly stated by him in his books, are as remarkable for their moderation, as, when stated on a public platform, they are for their crude extravagance. To say this, however, is to state but half the case. The difference between the two is not merely the difference between a similar statement repeated in two different tempers; it is the difference between two statements whose meanings are contradictory. What Mr. Morley really thinks about the matter the reader shall learn, as far as possible, in Mr. Morley's own words. We shall be surprised, if any one can recognize in it any identity with the views implied or stated by the Radical politician.

To begin then, Mr. Morley, in his capacity of serious thinker, rejects, as completely and contemptuously as any human being can reject, such puerile ideas as the natural sovereignty of the people. In his eyes the divine right of democracies is as silly a superstition as the divine right of kings. Divine, or natural right, has nothing to do with the matter. The claims of democracy are simply based on experience-experience of what in the long-run produces the best results. But what are the best results? That is the first thing to be settled. Mr. Morley states this plainly enough in the following passage, which, were he to write a treatise on the art of government, would logically stand as his opening proposition. All institutions ought to have for their aim the physical, intellectual, and moral amelioration of the poorest and most numerous class, that is the People.' Mr. Morley is aware that many men, not Radicals, are willing to assent to this. Though they would have nothing done by the People, they would have everything done for the People. But Radicalism maintains that the People should not only have good done for

*'Rousseau,' vol. ii. p. 194, 195.

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them, but that, so far as is possible, they should themselves be instrumental in doing it. The essence of Radicalism is the importance it gives this doctrine.

Now on what, according to Mr. Morley, is this doctrine based? It is based, he tells us, on several facts verified by long experience, the principal of which we gather from him are as follows. In the first place, despotisms and aristocracies always postpone, in the long-run, the larger interests, to the narrow interests of their own order,'* and thus the best guarantee for justice in public dealings is the participation in their own government of the people most likely to suffer from injustice': † to which must be added the further fact, that when the laws are made by the great body of persons affected by them,' there is not only a greater likelihood of their being good laws, but a 'greater likelihood of their being obeyed.' The more we study the character of the People as a whole, the more fully, Mr. Morley thinks, we shall recognize these truths. We shall see that 'great bodies of men in ages of trouble and confusion have an instinctive feeling for the fragment of truth which they happen to need for the hour;'§ we shall agree with Carlyle that the instincts of simple guileless persons, likely to be counted stupid by the unwary, are sometimes of prophetic nature, and spring from the deep places of the universe; and we shall recognize that in these truths we have the fundamental principles of democracy.' ||

The People, however, Mr. Morley fully recognizes, are not always a unanimous body. One part is as apt to disagree with another part, as both may be to disagree with an aristocracy. It is therefore necessary that the majority should carry the day. Mr. Morley by no means contends that this is a perfect arrangement, but that it is the best practicable. Experience,' he says, 'has taught the citizens in a popular government, that in the long-run it is most expedient for the majority of votes to decide the law. In other words, the minority submit to obey laws which were made against their will, because they cannot avoid the necessity of undergoing worse inconveniences than are involved in this submission.' ¶ Government thus conducted may not literally represent the will of the entire People, but it represents it more completely than it could be possibly represented otherwise. It is the nearest approach we can make to the ideal we ought to aim at.

These views, as the views of an extreme Radical, are

* Miscellanies,' vol. ii. p. 45.

Rousseau,' vol. ii. p. 145.

Ibid. vol. i. p. 193.

tCompromise,' p. 126.

§ Miscellanies,' vol. iii. p. 279. Rousseau,' vol. ii. p. 185.

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