miseries foretold by Sir Henry Maine, but they will be evolved in England, with more or less precipitance, as they have been evolved in other lands.
The preponderance of voting power lodged below that centre of stability in which reside the intelligence, enterprise, and industry of a nation cannot fail to be abused by inheritors of the low arts of a Cleon or a Clodius. The wheel must "come full circle" in England as elsewhere. Successive generations repeat the follies of the past.
It is the most pity-moving characteristic in the history of man, that the self-earned miseries of one country are powerless to guard against their repetition in another.
Each seems to crave to work out, not its own salvation, but its own—destruction.
"There is a history in all men's lives
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy
With a near aim of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life; which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time."
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
