In this somewhat rambling paper I have subjected Godkin to a severe test by a contrast of his public and private utterances covering many years, not however with the intention of accusing him of inconsistency. Ferrero writes that historians of our day find it easy to expose the contradictions of Cicero, but they forget that probably as much could be said of his contemporaries, if we possessed also their private correspondence. Similarly, it is a pertinent question how many journalists and how many public men would stand as well as Godkin in this matter of consistency if we possessed the same abundant records of their activity? The more careful the study of Godkin's utterances, the less will be the irritation felt by men who love and believe in their country. It is evident that he was a born critic, and his private correspondence is full of expressions showing that if he had been conducting a journal in England, his criticism of certain phases of English policy would have been as severe as those which he indulged in weekly at the expense of this country. "How Ireland sits heavy on your soul!" he wrote to James Bryce. "Salisbury was an utterly discredited Foreign Secretary when you brought up Home Rule. Now he is one of the wisest of men. Balfour and Chamberlain have all been lifted into eminence by opposition to Home Rule simply." To Professor Norton: "Chamberlain is a capital specimen of the rise of an unscrupulous politician." Again: "The fall of England into the hands of a creature like Chamberlain recalls the capture of Rome by Alaric." To another friend: "I do not like to talk about the Boer War, it is too painful.... When I do speak of the war my language becomes unfit for publication." On seeing the Queen and the Prince of Wales driving through the gardens at Windsor, his comment was "Fat, useless royalty;" and in 1897 he wrote from England to Arthur Sedgwick, "There are many things here which reconcile me to America."[208] In truth, much of his criticism of America is only an elaboration of his criticism of democracy. In common with many Europeans born at about the same time, who began their political life as radicals, he shows his keen disappointment that democracy has not regenerated mankind. "There is not a country in the world, living under parliamentary government," he wrote, "which has not begun to complain of the decline in the quality of its legislators. More and more, it is said, the work of government is falling into the hands of men to whom even small pay is important, and who are suspected of adding to their income by corruption. The withdrawal of the more intelligent class from legislative duties is more and more lamented, and the complaint is somewhat justified by the mass of crude, hasty, incoherent, and unnecessary laws which are poured on the world at every session."[209]