outdoor relief would command the approval of the agricultural voters.
Protection in the form of the corn laws was unpopular in England; this,
however, cannot with fairness be put down to the moral or intellectual
credit of the multitude. The corn laws were disliked because they
enhanced the price of bread. Even as it was, the Chartists used to
interrupt the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, and it is an idle
fancy that the dangers of a protective tariff are in themselves more
patent to the electors of England than to the democracy of France or of
America. Trades Unionism is in many of its features a form of
protectionism. If again we turn to foreign policy, we must read history
with a strangely perverted eye if we hold that the people have in
general condemned wars, whether just or unjust. There is hardly to be
named a great war in which England has been engaged which has not
engaged popular support. In the struggle with the American Colonies the
warlike sentiment of the people was undoubtedly opposed to the prudence
and justice of a small body of enlightened men, who found their
representative in Burke. In England, it is true, no great change of law
or of policy can in general be effected until it has in some sort been
sanctioned by popular approval. But to attribute every advance, or even
most advances, along the path of progress to the masses by whom a step
forward is finally sanctioned, is hardly a more patent fallacy than the
notion that because every statute is passed with the assent of the
Crown, to the Queen may be ascribed the glory of every beneficial Act
passed in her name. To maintain, as every man versed in history must
maintain, that ignorance must from the necessity of the case be the ally
of prejudice, is not to deny to the people their merits or virtues. If
ignorance were wisdom as well as bliss, every effort in favour of
popular education were folly. No doubt the rich or educated classes are
slaves to delusions from which the crowd are free. This concession falls
far short of the doctrine that legislative progress is mainly due to the