with the great and difficult science of governing. This deficiency is deeply dangerous in persons who have the hardihood to assume the responsibility of prompting the legislative measures of those who are bound to hold themselves accountable to the people alone. While observing the overwhelming influence which these professionals have lately been allowed in the making of laws for the whole nation, I have sometimes been appalled at the evidence which comes before us of their profound ignorance of English history, its noble struggles, the structure and resources of our political system, and the great constitutional principles which we hold dear. They seem to have as little appreciation of these matters as they have of the feelings and souls of human beings. Their ignorance both of our political constitution, and of the principles which animate human nature, are proved by their audacious attempts at wholesale compulsion.[89] They scarcely would have succeeded had they brought their present tactics to bear upon a nation barely emerging from childhood, and accustomed to obey the rule of a despotic monarch. How dangerous is their attempt when made upon a people to whom constitutional freedom is dear, will be proved by the future ruin of the influence of that whole class which has attempted it. The limitations of their education produce a narrowness of intellect, which blinds them to the limits of their own legitimate influence. Hence the fatal mistake into which they have fallen. Compulsion is dear to them as life; the passion for compulsion grows by the indulgence granted to them by our foolish legislators. Who can tell to what they will compel us next? For their ignorance of history and of human nature lead them to run riot in our political constitution, which they do not understand; they tell us such and such questions are purely medical questions, while they are secretly, through carelessness or ignorance, or consciously, robbing us like burglars in the night of our cherished inherited safeguards, dearer to us than wealth or health; and by the arbitrary measures which they persuade a credulous or ignorant Legislature to adopt, by suspending the liberties of the citizen on all hands, and finally by abandoning the vital principle of jury trial in order that a project of theirs may work, they have at last taken that fatal step towards “establishing aristocracy, the most oppressive of absolute governments.” And let the people of England never forget that the government of an aristocracy does not consist in that of wealth or hereditary privileges so much as in that arbitrary power of a particular class, whose enactments are permitted to override the safeguards of our Constitution.