resumed, and I am told that you and Walter Bagehot are the political
editors. Supposing that your politics are not essentially different from
those of the _Westminster_ the _Review_ is of _practical_ interest to me,
in spite of my unfortunate collision last year, for which I hope you have
forgiven me. I wrote in the last _Westminster_ the last article on the
"Administrative Example of the United States," and in the forthcoming
number I have written the second article on "International Immorality." I
wrote them freely, and indeed could not comfortably take money from
Chapman in his present circumstances, but I would much rather write for
the _National Review_ if I am admissible.... I value _forms_ of government
in proportion as they develop moral results in individual man; and if I
_now_ am democratic for Europe, it is not from any abstract and exclusive
zeal for democracy, all the weaknesses of which I keenly feel, but because
the dynasties, having first corrupted or destroyed the aristocracies, and
next become hateful, hated, and incurable themselves, have left no
government possible which shall have stability and morality except the
democratic. In England my desire is to ward off this result, to which, I
think, our aristocracy are driving fast by uniting their cause with the
perfidious immoralities of the Continent.

"Your political prospectus seems to me to be delusive by its vagueness. I
mean, that it is no sort of security after misunderstandings between
editors and writers. I think it is liable practically to lead to the
result that one man's mind seems undesirably to assume the authority of a
confederation;... but where Truth is sought, this is not easily borne.
Have you considered whether you may not do as the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
which admits independent essays with the writer's name signed? I value the
convenience of anonymous writing, and I do not wish to see it destroyed;
but it is undoubtedly abused and overdone, and I think every movement in
the opposite direction has its use."