that even in 1829 a _plebiscite_, had one been possible, would have negatived the Catholic Relief Bill. The mitigation again of the Criminal Law was the work of thinkers like Romilly and Bentham. These eminent reformers would have been much surprised to have been told that the uneducated masses were their staunch supporters. One of the greatest improvements ever effected by legislation was the reform in the administration of parochial relief. The new poor law was essentially unpopular; its principles were established by economists; its enactment was due to the Whigs, supported, as it should always be remembered to his credit, by the Duke of Wellington. It may be conjectured from recent legislation that at this very moment an indiscriminate renewal of outdoor relief would command the approval of the agricultural 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