is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil of persistent and
obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable shapes of tradition
and authority. For under a free press, a nation must ultimately be
guided not by a caste, not by a class, not by mere wealth, not by the
passions of a mob: but by mind; by the net result of all the common-sense
of its members; and in the present default of genius, which is un-common
sense, common-sense seems to be the only, if not the best, safeguard for
poor humanity.

1867




LECTURE I--CASTE


[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.]

These Lectures are meant to be comments on the state of France before the
French Revolution. To English society, past or present, I do not refer.
For reasons which I have set forth at length in an introductory
discourse, there never was any Ancien Regime in England.

Therefore, when the Stuarts tried to establish in England a system which
might have led to a political condition like that of the Continent, all
classes combined and exterminated them; while the course of English
society went on as before.

On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which