from them; to support which, the figures are often put together. Nor must the Mutual Admiration Society be forgotten.[1]
The writer's matured conviction is that we are rapidly drifting towards an unexampled national catastrophe, a conviction based upon independent examination of published facts and figures, undertaken without prepossession. The conclusions ultimately reached, and laid before Mr. Gladstone in a convenient, original form[2] on November 24, 1880, had been submitted a few days after prorogation, viz., on August 15, 1877, to Lord Beaconsfield, then H.M. Principal Secretary of State.[3]
What influence these representations exercised over the imagination and judgment of the Prime Minister can be gathered from the following extract from chapter i. of Endymion, published three years subsequently—
" Well," said his companion musingly, " it may be fancy, but I cannot resist the feeling that this country, and the world generally, are on the eve of a great change." * * * * *
"I see no reason why there should be any great change; certainly not in this country," said Mr. Ferrars. " Here we have changed everything that was required." * * * * *
"The whole affair rests on too contracted a basis," said his companion. " We are habituated to its exclusiveness, and, no doubt, custom in England is a power; but let some event suddenly occur which makes a nation feel or think, and the whole thing might vanish like a dream."
"What can happen? Such affairs as the Luddites do not occur twice in a century, and as for the Spafield riots, they are impossible now with Peel's new police. The country is employed and prosperous, and were it not so, the landed interest would always keep things straight."
- ↑ The very remarkable national confusion of thought upon these questions is exemplified in the Blue-books, where, since 1855, a Table has kept its ground giving the proportion of imports and exports (added together) per head of population in the United Kingdom. The raison d'être of this extraordinary calculation being a curious notion that outgoings are gain, and incomings must be gain too, because "consuming power" and real wealth cannot but be equivalent terms. The imports per head have doubled in a quarter of a century (it is hardly necessary to say why, after what has been adduced), and this elasticity, notwithstanding the census always went on rising, is officially set down as manifest proof of wealth. The more a man spends the richer he must be! So, in the opinion of the country lad coming to town, all that glitters is gold.
- ↑ "The Economist's A.B.C., or, Twenty-five years of Free Trade."
- ↑ In the midst of all this physical prosperity, one fine day in August, Parliament having just been prorogued, an unknown dealer in potatoes wrote to the Secretary of State, and informed him that he had reason to think that a murrain had fallen over the whole of the potato crops in England, and that, if * * * , the most serious consequences must ensue. This mysterious but universal sickness of a -single root changed the history of the world" (Endymion, chap. lxxxii.).
