question whatever; but he can be impressed by his betters. He will choose a 'select few' to rule him. They, too, will be heavy respectable men, the 'last people in the world to whom, if drawn up in a row, an immense nation would ever give an exclusive preference'; but they will have sense enough to elect in their turn an Executive of capable statesmen. Carlyle and Bagehot agreed—what few people can deny—that men are 'mostly fools.' Carlyle inferred that they should be ruled by heaven-sent heroes; Bagehot, that they should be impressed by the 'shams,' as Carlyle would have called them, appropriate to sluggish imaginations. Bagehot delighted in his Somersetshire clown, who regarded the Crimean War as a personal struggle between Queen Victoria and the Emperor Nicholas and did not see how it could be ended till the Queen had caught the Emperor and locked him up. The clown, that is, can only understand loyalty to a person. To reach him you must represent general principles by concrete symbols.
The cynic's merit is to see facts; and these facts are undeniable. I have always wondered how some political theories can survive a walk through the Strand. People argue gravely, and
