Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/229

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EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY.
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eulogized dead than by the living eulogist. There is not, I am sure, a more inflexibly honest politician or cultivated gentleman in England than Professor Beesly.

But I am bound to say that I think many of his political conceptions are mistaken. Like all Comtists, his admiration for France is excessive, and he dangerously undervalues the importance of parliamentary government. I acknowledge with gratitude the immense sacrifices which the French people have made in the cause of human emancipation. France is pre-eminently

"The poet of the nations,
 That dreams on and wails on
 While the hoxisehold goes to wreck."

All the same I cannot conceive with Mr. Beesly that English workmen, as such, have any very vital stake in the evolution of the social and political life of France. If they cannot, with the aid of the less selfish and more intelligent section of the middle class, combine in their own way to establish on the ruins of monarchy and aristocracy in England a stable republic, not based on birth and privilege, but on merit and equal rights, then let them throw up the sponge once and for all, and, betaking themselves, not in then- thousands, but their millions, to the free, open-armed United States of America, leave behind them a solitude wherein their oppressors may meditate at their leisure on the consequences of their own selfishness and folly.

A word or two on Mr. Beesly' s vigorous vindication of Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius, and I am done. To him these besmirched historic personages are standard-bearers of the Roman Revolution, the lineal descendants of the illustrious Gracchi and of Drusus.