250 THE CECILS
only elaborate discussions of the political questions of the day, which have an abiding historical value, but also weighty statements of political theory, and many an instructive glimpse of ethical motive and of the origin, growth, and modification of opinion. In finish of style, in controversial resource and subtlety, in the wide range of their scholarship and worldly wisdom, in the loftiness of their ideals and the strange combination of polemical bitterness with the most generous sympathies, these articles present us with an absolutely new picture of Lord Salisbury."
In 1858 appeared a volume of " Oxford Essays," which contained a paper by Lord Robert Cecil on " The Theories of Parliamentary Reform," a subject upon which his opinions are of special interest in view of his action nine years later. The upshot of his argument is that there is no objection to the extension of the franchise, so long as mere numbers are not allowed to pre- dominate over every other power in the State. Our whole constitution is " anomalous and irregular," but the anomalies and irregularities, the growth of ages, tend to counteract one another ; and " to remove one evil without removing that which is its counterpoise, to withdraw one poison from the prescription with- out withdrawing the other which is its antidote, is the maddest course of all. Better far to recon- struct the whole ; better still to let that which has worked well, work on." And he concludes
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