"I can speak with much freedom and energy (but no _wit_) on a subject on which I have information and feel interested: but I cannot make an after- dinner speech of compliment, nor talk on a subject which I do not feel I have very maturely considered.... In regard to _local government_, I think you would disarm the fears or scruples of many excellent and wise persons if you made prominent that you do not wish to return to the Middle Ages, or disown that progress of society which has knit England into a single State. I think it high time to make an outcry against a system of infinite legislation, in which we are subjected to laws too numerous for anyone to be acquainted with; yet I doubt whether we shall get a hearing with the most influential minds unless we make it clear that we fully understand that the progress of society forbids our returning to the simplicity of law which the good Saxons had under Alfred and his successors. The gap is vast, and there is _no danger whatever_ of our becoming too simple; yet this fanatical aim will be so surely imputed to us (in days when such men as Lord John Manners in Politics and the Puseyites in Church are afloat) that it is not needless to disown it even to candid and strong-headed hearers. "I am asking Froude to dine with me on Tuesday, the 29th instant, at 6 o'clock, to meet you and _some other friends_ whom I want to bring together: as I believe he will then be in London.... "_Thursday, 6 o'clock_.--I have just got Froude's reply, _Yes_: so please to say Yes, too. "In haste, sincerely yours, "F. W. Newman." As to the real meaning of the word "Democracy" Newman deals with it thus:-- "_What is_ Democracy?... Show that if one town governs itself by universal suffrage, that _is_ Democracy, so long as the people really exercise interest in their public concerns; but that if a whole country, as France, elects an Assembly, that is _not_ Democracy, but Empire delegated to an Oligarchy, because the people at large cannot understand, follow, and control public measures. "I do not mean to dictate this, or any one mode; but I feel strongly that you must put a sharp curb on all invective _until_ you have fully developed the difference between the common Radicalism and your own views. Pulszky says he is satisfied you were not _understood_ at the Radley Hotel dinner. Radicals are almost as slow as Tories to admit a new thought.