Let us take, for instance, the two questions of Free Trade and Bimetallism. If any British Government were to revert to the system of protection, it cannot be doubted that throughout the country there would be meetings and demonstrations, at which every throat would be unanimous in shouting condemnation of their conduct. America has witnessed a precisely similar outburst in favour of a proposal {186} to remonetise silver. The issues raised, however, both by the free traders and the bimetallists, are of a kind so complicated that exceedingly few people would be able even to describe their nature clearly enough to satisfy the most lenient examiner who should set them a paper in economics. The majority of those who declared for bimetallism in America had as little to do with forming their own opinions as the little boys would have in a preparatory school who should shout their approval of some new emendation made by one of their masters of a corrupt passage in Pindar; nor does that British opinion in favour of free trade principles which has caused our Government to adopt them, and would hinder or prevent their repudiation, rest in the minds of the majority of those who hold it, on any larger amount of original thought or knowledge. Ninety-nine free traders out of a hundred would never have been free traders at all if it had not been for the oratory of Cobden. The least-educated portion of the citizens of the United States would never have howled themselves hoarse over an intricate financial problem if it had not been for the oratory and the singular activity of Mr. Bryan. Indeed, what is oratory itself, which in all democracies, from that of Athens downwards, has been essential to the work of government, but an embodied expression of the fact that the many are powerless, unless here and there some thinker will think for them, and give them opinions which may form a mould or a nucleus for their own? Even a {187} village meeting is never got together without the agency of some one who is slightly more efficient than the rest. He need not be wiser than they. He very frequently is not; but he has some gift or other which qualifies him for taking the lead. His temperament is more active, his words flow more freely, or he is hampered by less insight into his own ignorance or imbecility; and his opinions are the nucleus round which those of the rest form themselves, and which generally imparts to them something of its own character, as a vinegar plant does to the liquor in which it is immersed.