It would be unfair to judge any country by its political professors. At the same time, if any country is so foolish as to follow such guides, there is a probability of mischief in national--still more in international--affairs. For they are as innocent as the lawyers themselves, of any knowledge of the real insides of things. They differ of course from the lawyers in many ways. They are ever for making changes for the sake of symmetry; while the man of law is for keeping as he is until the last moment; or at any rate until it is clearly his interest to budge. A priesthood has a burning faith in its own hand-wrought idols; the lawyer on the contrary, does not go readily to the stake, does not catch fire easily, being rather of the nature of asbestos. When lawyers monopolise political power--even when they merely {138} preponderate, as of late years they have seemed to do more and more in all democratic countries, whether of the monarchical or republican type--they invariably destroy by insensible gradations that which is most worth preserving in man or state, the soul. But they do not bring on sudden catastrophe as a priesthood does; their method is to strangle slowly like ivy. In England, nowadays--indeed ever since the 'eighties, when professors of Political Economy became discredited as political guides--there are not many evidences of priestly influence. Certainly there is nothing of an organised kind. What exists is erratic and incalculable. There is much clamour; but it is contradictory, spasmodic, and inconstant, without any serious pretence, either of learning or science, to support it. Each of our prophets is in business for himself. There is no tinge of Erastianism about any of them. For the most part they are the grotesques and _lions comiques_ of the world of letters, who prophesy standing on their heads, or grinning through horse-collars, and mistaking always "the twinkling of their own sophisticated minds for wisdom." Alliance between a priesthood and a bureaucracy tends gradually to produce, as in the case of China, an oppressive uniformity--not unlike that aimed at by the more advanced socialists--where every fresh innovation is a restriction hampering the natural bent. On the other hand an alliance between a priesthood and a military caste--especially when the bureaucracy is ready to act in sympathy--is one of the commonest causes of international convulsions. {139} [Sidenote: PRIESTS AND SOLDIERS]