In so far as the "Reminiscences," therefore, ruin Carlyle as a politician, their publication must be considered a gain for the English race. The particular political vice his influence fostered, that nobody who cannot thrash you in fight is worth listening to, is, it must be said, a vice peculiar to the English race. It is only in the Anglo-Saxon forum that a man of foreign birth and unfamiliar ways of thinking has to obtain a _locus standi_ by making himself an object of physical terror. The story which has lately gone the rounds of the papers, of Carlyle's discussion with some Irishman who got the better of him in an argument in support of the logical right of the Irish to manage their own affairs, in which he met his opponent in the last resort in half-humorous vehemence by informing him that he would cut his throat before he would let him have his independence, is not a bad expression of the spirit which has governed English policy in dealing with dependent communities. There is a certain wisdom and justice in exacting from every malcontent who asks for great changes in his condition some strong proof of his earnestness; but it is a test which has to be applied with great discretion, which nations that have made a great fortune with a strong right hand are not likely to apply with discretion, and which is apt to make weakness seem ridiculous as well as contemptible. The history of English politics for fifty years at least has been the history of the efforts of the nation to accustom itself to some other than the English standard of political respectability, to familiarize itself with the idea that pacific people, and poor people, and queer people had something to say for themselves, and were entitled to a place in the world. To the success of that effort it is safe to say that Mr. Carlyle's political writings have been more or less of an obstacle, and that the destruction of his influence will contribute something to the solution of some of the more serious pending problems of English politics. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUMMER RESORT