guarantee that the power would not be used with-
out conscience. Hitherto we have had neither
any
the guarantee nor the conscience, and we believe
that an infusion of a higher morality into the legis-
lature, far more than a higher intellect, is that
which is wanting. To trace every injustice or
imperfection in the laws to selfishness would
be to ignore alike history and human nature.
But nothing is more true than that past legisla-
tion has been, and that present legislation is,
more impeded by selfishness than by any other
one thing. We mean by selfishness the different
modifications of self-interest, and the passions
When we mark
commonly classed as selfish.

the marvellous success which has attended man's
investigation of the material universe, how beauti-
fully the knowledge he has gradually built up has
been used in satisfying his wants, and how intricate
and refined are the processes by which he has
achieved so much, we are filled with wonder and
admiration. But if we turn our gaze into the
field of social phenomena, how different is the
view! There we see opinion conflicting with
opinion, the strong tyrannising over the weak, vice
rampant and shameless, toil and ignorance and
privation the lot of the vast majority of the human
race, and more than one half of humanity in forced

subordination to the other half; yet the system under which these things exist is lauded as the noblest development of which mankind is capable. Broadly and advisedly we say, intending to enter into particulars directly, that the miserable failure is less owing to inherent difficulties than to intense selfishness. It is the selfishness and immorality of the ruling classes which create half the problems it is the business of the legislature to solve, or rather to apply the solution.

Take the English House of Commons. Though that House is not the place for philosophical discoveries, it always contains many men of the highest administrative and practical ability. But social philosophy is immeasurably in advance of its practical application; and the reason is the low moral tone of the great mass of members of parliament.1 A man who, blinded by his interests or his passions,

15 Mr. Bright, in his last speech at Birmingham, expresses an opinion which is common to every one who knows anything of the House of Commons. The only fault to be found with it, is that it does not do full justice to the selfishness, sordidness, and corruption which taint an assembly containing so many noble-hearted and large-minded men. Mr. Bright says: 'This House of Commons, I will undertake to say, is by far the most corrupt that has been elected and assembled since the Reform Bill. I am not able to say what it has cost to seat these 658 members in that house, but if I said it had cost them and their friends a million of money I should be a long way under the mark. I believe it has cost more to seat those 658 men there than it has cost to seat all the members of all the other representative and legislative assemblies in the world that are now in existence in the different countries of the globe. And, without a man's intending to be corrupt, this state

does what is wrong, believing it to be right, commits a moral, not an intellectual, error. This selfblinding runs through all the relations of life, and the legislator does not escape its influence. Strong and weak minds are alike affected by it; the first blind themselves with clever, the last with shallow, sophisms. He, then, who knowingly sacrifices the interests of the community to what he believes to be his own interests, and he who, through laziness, or passion, or want of study, holds wrong convictions, equally commit a moral error. And all these errors may be justly urged against the House of Commons.

We speak of the rank and file, without whose consent the few great and illustrious men are powerless. Without learning, 16 without special

of things makes him inevitably corrupt.' And again: 'There are many members who pay always from 1,000l. to 15,000l. for their election; and although there are men in the House of Commons who are too honest, I believe, to be swayed by that consideration, still there are great numbers, I am satisfied, who are willing to take almost any kind of measure on any subject from any government, rather than go back to their constituents with the chance, first of all, of not coming back to the house at all, and with the certainty that if they stand a contest they must lessen the balance at their bankers by several thousand pounds; and so they were willing to tolerate a Tory government and Tory reform bill, to break up the Liberal party, to do anything whatever, as they say, to settle the question in the House of Commons' style and fashion in this parliament and during the present session, and not as the great body of the people wish it to be settled; and they are ready to bear all this rather than have a dissolution of parliament.'

16 There are 292 university men in the House of Commons, and of

training, without deep convictions, without any superior ability for politics or anything else, without, in fact, any recommendation, but an ancient name, or a large Nisi Prius practice, or a large business inherited from a shrewd father, they enter Parliament, double their subscriptions to local charities, send presents of of game to their chief to their chief supporters, and settle down into very contented, very respectable, very ordinary members of parliament, generally voting with their party, never absent from an important division, (except when a dissolution threatens,) and ready to make any sacrifice—even to risking a revolution-in order to be off to their shooting in September. When will the public come to see, that to assume the functions of a legislator from personal motives, or without special qualifications, is to commit an abominable crime?

These views concerning the real impediments to good government are borne out by the actual legislation of the last fifty years.

The opposition to Catholic Emancipation could

these only 45 are honour men. To say that they who have taken honours are necessarily better educated than they who have not been to a university, would be preposterous; but, as a general rule, if a man takes his ordinary degree, but does not pass in honours, it is a sign of intellectual laziness or intellectual incapacity. We take the figures from the recent Essays on Reform.'

not have arisen from pure intellectual blindness. The denial of the rights of private judgment in matters of religion, is only one of the many forms in which bigoted intolerance has gratified itself; and the passing of the Relief Bill was due more to the higher moral standard which the nation, or at least a portion of it, had reached, than to the discovery of powerful arguments of which preceding generations had not the benefit.

The absurdities and anomalies of the representative system had been recognised long before the Reform Bill of 1832. A petition was presented in 1793, by a society associated for the purpose of obtaining parliamentary reform, in which the inequalities that then existed, and continued to exist until 1832, were ably pointed out.17 But the House of Commons neither opposed it at the beginning of the agitation through any intellectual blindness, nor in the end yielded it through any superior enlightenment. Selfishness made them oppose it; fear forced them to pass it.

The abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions cannot be too highly praised. But will any one assert that the same influence produced it and the belief in the Principia? The Principia

17 A copy of the petition is given in the appendix to 'Molesworth's History of the Reform Bill.'