feel that there is in them a great deal of truth, as well as a great
deal of geniality. But along with that truth and with that geniality
there is a streak of that erroneous type of optimism which is founded on
the fallacy of which I have spoken above. Before we congratulate
ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society,
we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent. Are we
without the fault because we have the opposite virtue? Or are we without
the fault because we have the opposite fault? It is a good thing
assuredly, to be innocent of any excess; but let us be sure that we are
not innocent of excess merely by being guilty of defect. Is it really
true that our English political satire is so moderate because it is so
magnanimous, so forgiving, so saintly? Is it penetrated through and
through with a mystical charity, with a psychological tenderness? Do we
spare the feelings of the Cabinet Minister because we pierce through all
his apparent crimes and follies down to the dark virtues of which his
own soul is unaware? Do we temper the wind to the Leader of the
Opposition because in our all-embracing heart we pity and cherish the
struggling spirit of the Leader of the Opposition? Briefly, have we left
off being brutal because we are too grand and generous to be brutal? Is
it really true that we are _better_ than brutality? Is it really true
that we have _passed_ the bludgeon stage?

I fear that there is, to say the least of it, another side to the
matter. Is it not only too probable that the mildness of our political
satire, when compared with the political satire of our fathers, arises
simply from the profound unreality of our current politics? Rowlandson
and Gilray did not fight merely because they were naturally pothouse
pugilists; they fought because they had something to fight about. It is
easy enough to be refined about things that do not matter; but men
kicked and plunged a little in that portentous wrestle in which swung to