Manchester University, a most interesting and highly suggestive
address, in which, referring to conservative Great Britain, he thus
pictured a phase of current belief: "Political power is described as
lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, with scanty regard
for tradition or history. Democracy, they say, is going to write its own
programme. The structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing
half-hidden, but serious alterations. Men discover a change of attitude
towards law as law; a decline in reverence for institutions as
institutions."

While, however, the influences at work are thus general and the
manifestations whether on the other side of the Atlantic or here bear a
strong resemblance, yet difference of conditions and detail
--constitutional peculiarities, so to speak--must not be
disregarded. One form of treatment may not be prescribed for all. In our
case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country
and ourselves to the unforeseeable,--the navigation of uncharted waters;
and this adaptation cannot be considered hi any correct and helpful,
because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located.
Surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. A
physician, diagnosing the chances of a patient, must first correctly
ascertain, or at least ascertain with approximate correctness, the seat
of the trouble under which the patient is suffering. So, we.

And here I must frankly confess to small respect for the
politician,--the man whose voice is continually heard, whether from the
Senate Chamber or the Hustings. There is in those of his class a
continual and most noticeable tendency to what may best be described as
the _post ergo propter_ dispensation. With them, the eye is fixed on the
immediate manifestation. Because one event preceded another, the first