philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal,
of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of great
communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and
counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations
have elapsed since the first great national emancipation, of
which an account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient
of books that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke,
scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw,
yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of
life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens. The
slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment of their
liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in a
few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur
against the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury
fare of the house of bondage to the dreary waste which still
separated them from the land flowing with milk and honey. Since
that time the history of every great deliverer has been the
history of Moses retold. Down to the present hour rejoicings like
those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been speedily
followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife.8 The
most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering.
The most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good
that had been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and
sanguine tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still
recent, weigh quite fairly the evils which it has caused against
the evils which it has removed. For the evils which it has caused
are felt; and the evils which it has removed are felt no longer.

Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is
during the cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to