its creditors; either may increase in prosperity; either may fall into difficulties. If, then, they have this unity of will; if they are capable of doing and suffering good and evil, can we, to use Mr. Gladstone’s words, “deny their responsibility, or their need of a religion to meet that responsibility?” Joint-stock banks, therefore, and clubs, “having a personality, lie under the necessity of sanctifying that personality by the offices of religion;” and thus we have “a new and imperative ground” for requiring all the directors and clerks of joint-stock banks, and all the members of clubs, to qualify by taking the sacrament. The truth is, that Mr. Gladstone has fallen into an {133}error very common among men of less talents than his own. It is not unusual for a person who is eager to prove a particular proposition to assume a _major_ of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition, without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal more. The fatal facility with which Mr. Gladstone multiplies expressions stately and sonorous, but of indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to practise this sleight on himself and on his readers. He lays down broad general doctrines about power, when the only power of which he is thinking is the power of governments, and about conjoint action when the only conjoint action of which he is thinking is the conjoint action of citizens in a state. He first resolves on his conclusion. He then makes a _major_ of most comprehensive dimensions, and having satisfied himself that it contains his conclusion, never troubles himself about what else it may contain: and as soon as we examine it we find that it contains an infinite number of conclusions, every one of which is a monstrous absurdity.