It would be interesting to see this theory of Conservatism, quietly admitted though it be into the working details of legislation, hawked for acceptance among the Opposition benches, and note the result. What is this new creed of yours? we can fancy the hon. and gallant member for Loamshire ejaculating. That there must be no class influence in politics? That any half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many dukes? That the will of the people is the supreme political tribunal? That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss the Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient servants? And you tell me that I can profess this horrible creed without ceasing to be a Tory! Before I could with a spark of honesty so much as parley with it I should have to crave a seat among the red-hot gentlemen yonder below the gangway. And the hon. and gallant member would only say the truth. Privilege is the mint mark of Toryism, exclusiveness is its life and soul. The doctrine of equal rights must be in everlasting repugnance to it. Toryism is the political expression of feudalized society, with lords and squires at the top, subservient dependants half-way down, and a mass of brutalized serfs at the bottom. It has been comparatively humanized by modern influences, but nothing can change the bent of its genius. With privilege vested interests of all sorts enter into ready fellowship. All those good citizens who have reason to suspect that if a public inquest sat upon them the verdict would not be favourable hasten to edge themselves in as closely as possible towards the privileged circle. The village rector, who does his duty with all the conscientiousness of a beneficed Christian, but who prizes his glebe and tithe, rushes to Cambridge to swell the majority for Mr. Raikes. Gentlemen of the long robe who make politics a vocation gravitate for some reason or other towards Liberalism; but the lower branch of the profession displays an opposite tendency. The county lawyer, who makes two-thirds of his income out of the mysteries of conveyancing, has reason to dislike such things as the registration of titles, and the transfer of estates by a few sentences extracted from a public record. The licensed victuallers, tens of thousands strong and with more than a hundred millions of invested capital, dread the change which would give them a quiet Sunday in return for a seventh of their profits. The strength of Toryism lies in this phalanx of vested interests and social privileges. The golden chain reaches from squire to Boniface, and still lower in the social scale, wherever some snug little peculium is found to nestle. The principles of Neo-Conservatism would rend the structure from top to bottom. The doctrine that the solution of all our political problems and the fate of all our institutions are simply an affair of numerical majorities at the ballot-box, and that the interests of the