special gifts--gifts of a very plain and almost universal order.
Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then
openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and
a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities
which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though
certainly not the instruments) of political power. These qualities
the best working men possess in a far higher degree than any other
portion of the community; indeed, they are almost the only part of
the community which possesses them in any perceptible degree."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Order and Progress_, pp. 149-54, and again at p. 174.]

The worst of it is that, if Sir Henry Maine is right, we have no more
to hope from other classes than from roughs and clowns. He can discern
no blue sky in any quarter. "In politics," he says, "the most
powerful of all causes is the timidity, the listlessness, and the
superficiality of the generality of minds" (p. 73). This is carrying
criticism of democracy into an indictment against human nature. What
is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance
and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and
superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more
sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar
on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of
contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best
and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals
are still passably prudent, and Conservatives quite sufficiently
wide-awake.

Another of the passages in Sir Henry Maine's book, that savours rather
of the party caricaturist than of the "dispassionate student of