Then of these “statesmen,” most clung, if not to self-interest, to personal crotchets. What is more darling to a man than the child of his intellect or fancy? How the poor poetaster hugs his tawdry verses as if they were the imperial ornaments of genius! Just in the same way does the politician love the policies himself hath devised, pressing them forward at all hazards, while he is blind to the utility of others. This is the basis of that aspect of selfishness which often mars in the approbation of a country a really honest statesmanship--an egotistic tenacity of one's own creature as the best, which yet is not the criminal selfishness of ambition. Still that egotism is not seldom disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen nursed their own bantlings and held them up to national notice, they were apt to avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as able as themselves. For instance, Joshua Hale--who is far above these remarks generally--had put forth a scheme for the solution of the St. Helena property question--very likely a good one, albeit revolutionary, and nothing would convince him that any other could succeed. He wished every man in St. Helena--a turbulent adjunct of the British Empire--to be a landowner, and I do think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in that island should be happy until he was one. Yet there were other men ready to offer simpler remedies, and to prove that if every man in St. Helena became a landowner it would become a very hell upon earth, and more unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen do not sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settlement, what will become of St. Helena? Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One thought that repeal of the Poor-Laws and a new system of relief would reach his case; another saw the root of the Baby's sorrow in Trades' Unions; a third propounded cooperative manufactures; a fourth suggested that a vast source of income lay untouched in the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed with porpoises, and showed how certain parts of these animals were available for food, others for leather, others for a delicious oil that would be sweeter and more pleasant than butter; a fifth desired a law to repress the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants and convert arable lands into sheep-walks and deer-forests; a sixth maintained that there were waste lands in the kingdom of capacity to support hungry millions. In fact earth, heaven, and seas were to be regenerated by Act of Parliament for the benefit of Ginx's Baby and the people of England. Sir Charles listened impatiently, and at last burst forth again.