duty of having clear ideas about it. If the majority cling to an
opinion, why should we ask whether that is the sound and right opinion
or the reverse? Now this notion, which springs from a confusion of the
three fields of compromise with one another, quietly reigns almost
without dispute. The devotion to the practical aspect of truth is in
such excess, as to make people habitually deny that it can be worth
while to form an opinion, when it happens at the moment to be incapable
of realisation, for the reason that there is no direct prospect of
inducing a sufficient number of persons to share it. 'We are quite
willing to think that your view is the right one, and would produce all
the improvements for which you hope; but then there is not the smallest
chance of persuading the only persons able to carry out such a view; why
therefore discuss it?' No talk is more familiar to us than this. As if
the mere possibility of the view being a right one did not obviously
entitle it to discussion; discussion being the only process by which
people are likely to be induced to accept it, or else to find good
grounds for finally dismissing it.

It is precisely because we believe that opinion, and nothing but
opinion, can effect great permanent changes, that we ought to be
careful to keep this most potent force honest, wholesome, fearless, and
independent. Take the political field. Politicians and newspapers almost
systematically refuse to talk about a new idea, which is not capable of
being at once embodied in a bill, and receiving the royal assent before
the following August. There is something rather contemptible, seen from
the ordinary standards of intellectual integrity, in the position of a
minister who waits to make up his mind whether a given measure, say the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, is in itself and on the merits
desirable, until the official who runs diligently up and down the
backstairs of the party, tells him that the measure is practicable and