Balfour could have kept it and yielded so little practically to the object on which his friend's heart was set? Probably a certain aloofness even in friendship makes this possible. A more enthusiastic temperament would beget friendships with more quarrelsome possibilities.

Note again how the pessimistic and critical tendencies in him, and his aloofness from passion, helped in sifting the problem-in separating Free Trade from its current shibboleths, in pointing out the share of contingent events in framing so-called necessary maxims-for example, the share of English history in begetting the intense feeling of Englishmen against the taxation of food. And what he did in bringing to book Free Trade dogmatism he also did in reducing the optimistic declarations of the tariff reformers to the shape of schemes practicable in themselves and in view of public opinion. How carefully again has he avoided the old fallacy of the Manchester school-that men always act from self-interest! How important is the cognate distinction, which the hot-headed ever forget, between what is economically best, and what is on the whole wisest! Man does not live by bread alone. If Colonial preference should prove practicable and politically very valuable, have we not a gain far outweighing even valid criticisms from an economic point of view? If countries love each other the more through attaching a mistaken value to wellmeant concessions, does not the gain in love outweigh any loss due to the error? Are we to eliminate illusion wholly from the sources of love? If so, the mortality among existing loves will be heavy. In all this we see Mr. Balfour's patient, passionless pessimism-not the pessimism of the impracticable sentimentalist, but that of the highly practical statesman who tenderly reminds dreamers that they are in a hard world of fact.

To one whose views of life were more enthusiastic, such labour, devoted to an object which promised so little, would have been intolerable. It was a policy in many ways of self-effacement and self-abnegation, for the many could not appreciate it. It had nothing inspiring in it, and the best of his rivals would have done no more than carry it through perfunctorily and without spirit. Mr. Balfour, on the contrary, put his very best work into it. The energy which others reserve for favourite schemes, urged on by visions of great results to be accomplished, Mr. Balfour devoted to this pis-aller policy, which he had not chosen, which he thought a mistake-though now an inevitable one-which offered no prizes and many possible blanks.

I have, in the foregoing pages, emphasised the gifts shown by Mr. Balfour during the last two years, because they appear to me to be inadequately appreciated, and often confounded with qualities quite out of keeping with his intellectual character. But no fair critic should ignore the defects of the best qualities. If his power of dealing with a situation of unparalleled difficulty has been such that one need hardly in some directions fear the possibility of an over

estimate, I think he had some share in creating the difficulties he has dealt with so ably. The duality of his own mind, the aloofness which enables his own intellect to work undisturbed by his own passions, does not exist in others; and it may be questioned whether the policy of raising the fiscal question in the House of Commons and discussing it as in a debating society would be practicable for any House of Commons which did not consist mainly of Balfours. Even apart from Mr. Chamberlain's excesses, the endeavour would probably have led to trouble. The policy of Peel and Gladstone, which Mr. Balfour criticised on the 10th of June, 1903-the policy of maturing a programme before it is ventilated in the House-is perhaps almost a necessary one, because there will always be Chamberlains to turn a judicial inquiry, on a question on which feeling is in some quarters very strong, into a source of immediate disunion. I think that in his more recent action in shelving the fiscal question, Mr. Balfour has shown a conscious or unconscious perception of his earlier mistake. Moreover, the staying power and absolute imperturbableness which enable him to prolong a situation to most men intolerable, brings this much of Nemesis that a prolonged crisis is a prolonged period in which even small mistakes are serious. And no one can be constantly strung up to the desirable pitch. A man may boast that he keeps awake during an all-night sitting, when all his colleagues at one moment or another nod. But he will not be quite at his best all night. And so Mr. Balfour has occasionally, though rarely, at moments of fatigue or inattention, lost touch with the House's feeling. Again, his sense of what will affect his immediate audience-in which his perception goes hand in hand with his pessimism-sometimes makes him content on the platform with arguments unworthy of the political philosophy on which he practically acts—as when he swept away, in his speech to Protectionist Sheffield, the Cobdenist controversy as wholly without present interest, and as belonging simply to ancient history, a view inadequate to the real convictions of one who so fully realises the organic connection between present and past. Again, for one who sees a waiting game to be essential, there are moments when the dilemma, Own that you have failed' or 'Play a purely opportunist game for the present,' becomes intolerably difficult. The problem as to how far the end justifies the means is ever a hard one, and is ever haunted by the alternatives of failure owing to passing causes, or forms of compromise which the plain man' regards as somewhat disingenuous.

7

The surrender of the Wharton amendment appeared to some like a sacrifice of the official programme, and an admission that the Premier was at heart with the extreme reformers. It seemed to confirm the

It is of no interest whatever to us now except from an historical point of view. It is over and done with. I care no more for it than I do about the Bangorian controversy.'

'two whist players' theory. And stronger instances could be given.

But when criticism has said its worst, Mr. Balfour's achievement in the last two years has been extraordinary, though it has been so little appreciated that it offers small hope of present reward or prize. I believe that history will award the prize, and a very great one. His policy will live for posterity as a classical instance of a statesman who kept his head when hardly anyone else succeeded in doing so, who believed in himself in spite of the ridicule and invectives of assailants from both sides, and who gradually restored confidence and won back the faith of his party. Whether he succeeds or only just fails must largely depend on the chapter of accidents. The achievement remains in either case a most remarkable display of statesmanship, the full measure of which will only be appreciated when the con troversy is seen at some distance. Once again in history a single man has restored the fortunes of the republic, and has done so by a policy of delay. Cunctando restituit rem.

The events which the Spectator regarded as the occasion of the downfall of a great statesman have proved to be his opportunity.

WILFRID WARD.

IS PARLIAMENT A MERE CROWD?

Or late years many people have written on the psychology of crowds. It is now generally realised that crowds are not to be regarded as mere assemblages of individuals, but as a kind of creature more or less completely organised, and that the opinion of a crowd is not either the greatest common measure or the least common denominator of the opinions of the individuals composing it, but something altogether different-a kind of compelling emotion that controls the minds of the individual components, constraining them to act and feel not as they, as individuals, would have acted and felt, but in a manner often quite opposed to their own individual tendencies. In fact, it is not the presence of a number of individuals simultaneously together in one place that makes a crowd, so much as the existence of what I may call a crowd-sentiment animating a number of individuals, whether present at once or scattered abroad. Thus a nation is a crowd, and includes all patriotic citizens in whatever part of the world they may be. A university is a crowd, and may be counted to include past as well as present students. A public school is a crowd; the adherents of a political party are a crowd; the habitual readers of a given newspaper are a crowd. The adherents of a religious sect are a crowd; so are the members of a club, or of any society. In fact, there are all sorts and kinds of crowds, more or less loosely organised, from a mere mob at one end of the scale to a regiment under arms at the other. Every man alive probably belongs to a whole number of different crowds, by whose corporate sentiments his thoughts and his actions are controlled at different times and under different circumstances.

The question how many individuals it takes to make a crowd, what is the minimum number whose union can give rise to the crowdsentiment, has, I think, been answered in the formula defining the maximum numbers of a good dining company-namely, that they should not be more than the Muses. That formula implies that when more than nine persons are present together, taking part in a common function, the unfettered play of individuality ceases. A common sentiment is liable to arise which will control the action of the individual mind, and will, in fact, destroy the individuality

of most by subordinating them to the dominance of one. A crowd, in fact, may be compared to a great bed of one kind of flowera sheet of daffodils, where the flush of colour is the dominant effect, and where the individual blossoms go for nothing except as contributing to that effect. If an individual flower is to be admired for its own beauty and charm, it must be given a reasonable amount of space to itself and not combined with many of its fellows. It is exactly the same with men. Bring 100 men together into one room and you must silence ninty-nine of them that one may be heard. But that one, if he is to hold the floor, will be driven either to giving utterance to such sentiments as are pleasurable to the mass of his auditors; or, if he is strong enough, he can dominate them, and after a longer or shorter struggle can impose his opinions upon them. In a quite small assemblage of people such dominance can scarcely be arrived at, for where each can speak in turn, and where conversation more or less contributed to by all can be maintained, it is possible for each to preserve and more or less to state his own point of view without the necessity of surrendering himself either to the support or to the direct opposition of the contentions of another.

If we carry the eye of imagination far enough back into the history of mankind, we may be led to suspect that the earliest creatures to whom the name 'man' can be applied were incapable of forming themselves into a crowd. Man in the Paleolithic hunting stage was probably much more individualistic than he has ever been since. In his earliest warfare with beasts he probably depended upon individual cunning and furtive approach for the capture of his prey. Family co-operation was no doubt the earliest form of human co-operative effort; but a family even now is not a crowd. Family spirit is a totally different thing from the clan spirit. Family spirit is based upon individual relations and individual duties. It is essentially regardful of individual characters, prejudices, and peculiarities. In its highest form, as for instance among the Japanese, it includes the dead as well as the living in its purview.

It was not till the family gave place to the clan as the unit of nascent civilisation that the organisation of human crowds may be said to have begun. This occurred when the roving hunters' life was replaced by settlement in one locality, where homes were constructed, domestic animals reared, and simple agricultural operations undertaken. In fact, the formation of crowds seems to have been the great work of the Neolithic Age. To begin with, crowds were small, and doubtless had a tendency to split up and move from place to place. The tie that bound them to any one point was not at first a strong one, and the bond that united them together of necessity snapped when numbers increased beyond a certain point. The existence of a crowd where the individuals are mutually dependent upon one another for the means of life implies organisation, and the