of Parliament for years from taking the seat to which he had been four times elected, because he avowed what he believed upon theological questions. The difference between the two parties, even in the present general acceptance of a democratic system, may be put in words once used by Mr. Chamberlain-"It is the essential condition, the cardinal principle of Liberalism, that we should recognize rights, and not merely confer favours." With us, the suffrage is the right of every free citizen; with the Tories, it is a favour conferred upon the working by the moneyed classes. We demand religious equality; the Tories are willing to give toleration. But favours we do not ask, and toleration we will not have. Liberals, in fact, are prepared substantially to subscribe to the principles laid down more than a century since in the American Declaration of Independence—a document which sounded the knell of despotism on its own side of the Atlantic, and awoke echoes which shook down another despotism on ours. "We hold," said that document, "these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." These, broadly speaking, are Liberal principles; and when one has absorbed them thoroughly, there comes to him that Liberal sentiment, that enthusiasm for his fellows, which feels a blow struck at any man's freedom, in any part of the whole world, as keenly as if it were struck at his own. VIII. ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED ? IT may be thought that by dealing only with "the fundamental principles of the Liberal party," the Radicals were put aside as if they had no separate existence; and to a large extent this is true, for Radicals are simply advanced Liberals. The principles just asserted are common to all members of the progressive party. There are differences as to the time at which certain measures directly flowing from them shall become a portion of the party's platform; and that is all. A great deal of the prejudice which used to exist against those called "Radicals" has died away, but traces of it linger still; and it will be well to see what Radicalism, as a phase of Liberalism, really is. It may sound strange to be told that the Whigs were the Radicals of an earlier day, and that they sometimes carried their Radicalism to the point of revolution. In these times it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether those who call themselves by what was once the honourable title of "Whig" have any claim to be considered members of the Liberal party; and there are many who consider that they are now more truly conservative than the Conservatives themselves. The Whigs tell us that they are only acting as the drag on the wheel; but this implies that we are always going down hill. That we do not believe. We hold that we are progressing; and a drag which would act upon the coach as it climbs the hill is a product neither of prudence nor common sense. The bulk of the party of progress in these days may be said to combine Liberal traditions with Radical instincts. The two can mingle with the utmost ease, and, though they may run side by side for some time before they join, the steady stream of the one and the rapid rush of the other always unite at last in one broad river of liberalizing sentiment, which fertilizes as it flows. From the time when Bolingbroke wrote of some measure that "such a remedy might have wrought a radical cure of the evil that threatens our constitution" to the date, a century later, when those who wished to introduce a “radical reform”. into our representative system were called by the name, there were many Whigs who talked Radicalism without being aware of it; but when the title had been given to a section of the Liberal party, it became for a long period a term of reproach. Mr. Gladstone, once speaking at Birmingham, quoted a definition of the early Radicals which described them as men "whose temper had been soured against the laws and institutions of their country ;" and he admitted that there was much justification for their having been so. But one can quite understand that men of a soured temper were not likely to be popular with the placid politician who stayed at home, or the place-hunter who went to the House of Commons; and the bad meaning, once attached to the name, remained affixed to it for a very long time. Mr. Gladstone, in the speech referred to, was the first great English statesman to try and remove the reproach; and this he did by defining a Radical as a man who is in earnest." This was flattering, but as a definition lacked precision, for Tories are often in desperate earnest. Many Radicals would assert that the very name-coming, as it of course does, from the Latin word for "root"-tells everything; that it signifies that they go to the root of all matters with which they deal, and that, where reform is needed, it is a root and branch reform they advocate. To this it may be replied that to go to the root of everything is not always practicable and is not necessarily judicious. If a tree be thoroughly rotten, if it be liable to be shaken to the ground by the first blast, and thereby to injure all its surroundings, it should certainly be cut down, and as soon as it conveniently can be. But if the tree has only two or three If one rotten branches, there is no necessity to go to its root. does, it will very probably kill a good tree which, with only the decayed portions removed, might bear valuable fruit. As with trees, so with institutions; and what seems to be forgotten by many who call themselves Radical is that, in a highly-complex civilization such as ours, we have to bear with some things that are far from ideal, simply because of that force of do-nothingness which, powerful in mechanics, is as great in political life. A friend who has long worked in the Liberal cause once observed: "The misfortune is that it is difficult to tell what a man's ideas of public policy are from the mere fact of his calling himself a Radical. If by Radical is meant Advanced Liberala Liberal determined to push forward with all practicable speed, a Liberal who is in earnest-then I can understand it, and I will readily take the name. But if by Radical is meant a somewhat hysterical creature, who is ready to fight for every fad that tickles his fancy, as he seems to be in some cases, or a cantankerous being whose crotchets compel him to sever himself from all other workers, as he is in others; if he is of the extreme Spencerian school, and demurs to most legislation on the ground that it is over-legislation, or of the extreme Socialist school, and demands that Government shall do everything, and individual effort be practically strangled by force of law, I am not a Radical, and hope never to be called one." But the practical Radicalism which is one of the greatest factors in Liberal policy at the present day, is far removed from the schools just depicted. The reasonable Radical is not a believer in any of the schemes-as old as the hills and yet unblushingly preached to-day-which, by some legislative hocus-pocus, some supreme stroke of statecraft, will "put a pot on every fire and a fowl in every pot; " will endow each widow and give a portion to all unmarried girls; will feed the poor without burdening the community; and will make all the crooked paths straight without undue trouble to ourselves. He holds that Diseases desperate grown but he does not consider all diseases to be of the character described; he does not refuse the half-loaf because for the moment the whole one is impossible of attainment; and he does not repudiate other honest workers in the cause of progress because their pace is not quite so swift, and their point of view somewhat different. In the constant striving after a high ideal, there is in the Radical's heart a resolute desire to emerge from any rut into which politics may have degenerated. For the very reason of his existence is that, if there be an abuse in Church or State which agitation and argument can remove, all honest endeavours must be made to remove it. He cannot forget that many abuses have been got rid of by these means, and he profits by the lesson to attack those which remain. It is their extinction at which he aims. Earnestness, enthusiasm, and devotion to principle are his weapons, and these he will not waste in fruitless longings after a perfect State, but will use them to make the State we possess as perfect as is possible. In all things he will aim at the practical; he will remember that compromise is not necessarily cowardly, and that it is possible for those who disagree with him to be as honest in their views and as pure in their aims as himself. And in striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he will never forget that the greatest number is all. So many have been There are some rough The answer may be made that this is an ideal Radical, and that the real article is very different. taught to think, but they are wrong. diamonds in the Radical party, it is true; but, so long as they be diamonds, we can afford to wait a little for the polish. They are bigoted it may be said, and bigotry is hateful. But bigots are just as useful to a reform as backwoodsmen to a new community; they clear away obstacles from which gentler men would shrink; rough and occasionally awkward to deal with, they make the pathways along which others can move. But, it is sometimes asked, where are the old philosophical Radicals-men of the stamp of Bentham, and Grote, and James Mill? Dead, all of them, having done their life's work faithfully and well; and their successors have to look at politics from |