men whom he can trust to devize or support institutions making for
the common welfare. This is highly skilled work; and to be
governed by people who set about it as the man in the street would
set about it is to make straight for "red ruin and the breaking up
of laws." Voltaire said that Mr Everybody is wiser than anybody;
and whether he is or not, it is his will that must prevail; but
the will and the way are two very different things. For example,
it is the will of the people on a hot day that the means of relief
from the effects of the heat should be within the reach of
everybody. Nothing could be more innocent, more hygienic, more
important to the social welfare. But the way of the people on such
occasions is mostly to drink large quantities of beer, or, among
the more luxurious classes, iced claret cup, lemon squashes, and
the like. To take a moral illustration, the will to suppress
misconduct and secure efficiency in work is general and salutary;
but the notion that the best and only effective way is by
complaining, scolding, punishing, and revenging is equally
general. When Mrs Squeers opened an abscess on her pupil's head
with an inky penknife, her object was entirely laudable: her heart
was in the right place: a statesman interfering with her on the
ground that he did not want the boy cured would have deserved
impeachment for gross tyranny. But a statesman tolerating amateur
surgical practice with inky penknives in school would be a very
bad Minister of Education. It is on the question of method that
your expert comes in; and though I am democrat enough to insist
that he must first convince a representative body of amateurs that
his way is the right way and Mrs Squeers's way the wrong way, yet
I very strongly object to any tendency to flatter Mrs Squeers into
the belief that her way is in the least likely to be the right
way, or that any other test is to be applied to it except the test