I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others, that the
opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by personal
observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct of
public affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a theoretical
reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. Not, indeed,
that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on the other
side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much practical
knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see and hear
the difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating them,
stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution: it gave
me opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and other
political facts, did not produce the effects which had been expected
of them, and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me by
making me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel in a
machine, the whole of which had to work together. As a speculative
writer, I should have had no one to consult but myself, and should
have encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which would
have started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. But as a
Secretary conducting political correspondence, I could not issue an
order, or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons very
unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was thus in a good
position for finding out by practice the mode of putting a thought
which gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it by
habit; while I became practically conversant with the difficulties of
moving bodies of men, the necessities of compromise, the art of
sacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essential. I learnt how
to obtain the best I could, when I could not obtain everything;
instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not have
entirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when I could have
the smallest part of it; and when even that could not be, to bear with
complete equanimity the being overruled altogether. I have found,
through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possible
importance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary
condition for enabling anyone, either as theorist or as practical man,
to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities.
CHAPTER IV
YOUTHFUL PROPAGANDISM. THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW"