It is not difficult to see that his suggestion for a local Licensing Board has a great deal that might be said for it. His idea as regards a Ward- Mote to settle difficulties in local self-government in the same way would deal first hand with difficulties. In both cases these local boards would obviate the necessity for the despatching of endless little Private Bills to a Parliament which really has not time to deal effectually with them. Francis Newman certainly taught a truth which only gets more insistent as year succeeds year, that specialization is indeed the word of all others which holds within its letters in great measure "the healing of the nations," the simplifying of their puzzles. As regards the rights and wrongs of making war, Newman asks, "Why does one murder make a villain, but the murder of thousands a hero?" And again, "Why do princes and statesmen, who would scorn to steal a shilling, make no difficulty in stealing a kingdom?" Before calling this, as many an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized immorality, and as such the law of the land punishes the thief. Stealing a kingdom, however, is one of those national achievements which men justify to themselves as a patriotic feat, or, it may be, a necessity of empire, and it is not classified among punishable offences at all. And then it is necessary to remember that many things that are indefensible when only a few do them, seem to become, by an extraordinary method of reasoning, regarded as allowable when so many people do them that a spurious public opinion and a decadent fashion is born, which shelters them and prevents the light of an unbiassed judgment from showing up their shortcomings in morality. One has only to read up old records of the eighteenth century to see how slavery flourished in England among otherwise honourable men, and how public opinion condoned, nay, justified it to realize that public opinion regarded as _vox populi_, is often many spiritual leagues away from being _vox Dei_. Newman's point of view regarding war and extension of territory was not the popular one:-- "There are many who believe that the time will come when no weapons of war shall be forged, and universal peace shall reign.... We also believe that a time will come when men will look back in wonder and pity on our present barbarism; a time at which to begin a war--unless previously justified by the verdict of an impartial tribunal, bound in honour to overlook what is partially expedient to their own nation or party--will be esteemed a high and dreadful crime.