The first of these causes is that manners have grown gentler and passions less angry. A chief duty of the good citizen is to be angry when anger is called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in power, to expose his dishonesty, to eject him from office, to brand him with an ignominy which will prevent his returning to any post of trust. In former days indignation flamed higher, and there was little tenderness for offenders. Jehu smote the prophets of Baal. Bad ministers--and no doubt sometimes good ministers also--were in England beheaded on Tower Hill. Everywhere punishment came quicker and was more severe, though to be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the arm of justice is often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with none. This is an illustration of the principle that as righteous indignation is a valuable motive power in politics, the decline in it means a decline either in the standard of virtue or in the standard of zeal, possibly in both. Another cause may be found in the fact that the enormous growth of modern states has made the share in government of the individual citizen seem infinitesimally small. In an average Greek republic, he was one of from two to ten thousand voters. In England or France to-day he is one of many millions. The chance that his vote will make any difference to the result is so slender that it appears to him negligible. We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our State exerts. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from Davos in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the town of Cambridge in England and back again to deliver his vote against Home Rule at the general election of 1886, though he knew that his own side would have a majority in the constituency. Those who knew applauded, his opponents included, but I fear that few of us followed this shining example of civic virtue.