Popular judgment may be trusted as a rule, and in the long run, to decide a clear issue between truth and falsehood, and to decide it in favour of the former. But it becomes perplexed, when it is called upon to discriminate between the assurances of two rival sets of showmen, whose eagerness to outbid each other in the public favour leaves truthfulness out of account. In the absence of gold, one brazen counterfeit rings very much like another. People may be suspicious of both coins; but on the whole their fancy is more readily caught by the optimist effigy than the pessimist. They may not place entire trust in the 'ever-cheerful man of sin,' with his flattery, his abounding sympathy, his flowery promises, and his undefeated hopefulness; but they prefer him at any rate to 'the melancholy Jaques,' booming maledictions with a mournful {215} constancy, like some bittern in the desolation of the marshes. So far as principles were concerned most of the trouble was unnecessary. Among the would-be reformers--among those who sincerely desired to bring about efficiency within their own spheres--there was surprisingly little that can truly be called antagonism. But competition of an important kind--competition for public attention and priority of treatment--had produced many of the unfortunate results of antagonism. It was inevitable that this lamentable state of things must continue, until it had been realised that one small body of men, elected upon a variety of cross issues, could not safely be left in charge of the defence of the Empire, the domestic welfare of the United Kingdom, and the local government of its several units. [Sidenote: ARTIFICIAL ANTAGONISMS] It was not merely that the various aims were not opposed to one another; they were actually helpful to one another. Often, indeed, they were essential to the permanent success of one another. The man who desired to improve the conditions of the poor was not, therefore, the natural enemy of him who wanted to place the national defences on a secure footing. And neither of these was the natural enemy of others who wished to bring about a settlement of the Irish question, or of the Constitutional question, or of the Imperial question. But owing partly to the inadequacy of the machinery for giving a free course to these various aspirations--partly to the fact that the machinery itself was antiquated, in bad repair, and had become clogged with a variety of obstructions--there was an unfortunate tendency on the part of every one who had any particular object very much {216} at heart, to regard every one else who was equally concerned about any other object as an impediment in his path.