we could not quarrel with him, so reasonable that we found it hard to
dispute with him; so absolutely free from pomposity that we could not
laugh at him, so genuinely and freshly witty that we could not help
laughing with him--but a critic still. He thought scorn of our pleasant
land, and gave no credence unto our word. He belittled our heroes; he
pooh-poohed our achievements; he cast doubt on our prophecies; he
caricatured our aspirations. He told us that we were the victims of a
profound delusion. He warned us that the great Democracy on which we
relied as our unchangeable foundation would give way under our feet. He
pointed out that Labour had no more reason to expect its salvation from
Liberalism than from Toryism. He insisted that all our political reform
was mere machinery; that the end and object of politics was Social
Reform; and that the promise of the future was for those who should help
us to be better, wiser, and happier; for those who concerned themselves
rather with the product of the machine than with the machine itself; who
were not satisfied by eternally taking it to pieces and putting it
together again, but who wanted to know what sort of stuff it was, when
perfected, to turn out. He suggested that "the present troubled state of
our social life" had at least something to do with "the thirty years'
blind worship of their idols by our Liberal friends," and that it threw
some doubt on "the sufficiency of their worship." "It is not," he said,
"fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for Free Trade, Extension of the
Suffrage, and Abolition of Church Rates, instead of graver social ends;
but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe,
with our social condition what it is, that they have performed a great,
a heroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty
years, with these Liberal nostrums."

And, while our new critic was thus disdainful of much that we held
sacred, of political machinery and logical government, and individual