If, indeed, upon these there were induced faction and deliberate obstruction, then ...

If, indeed, upon these there were

induced faction and deliberate obstruction, then the

future took a greyer colour. An age of great cities, Bagehot once said, requires strong Government.

An age of great armaments and swift decisive movements by land and sea, required a corresponding rapidity and certainty of authority. Eyes turned anxiously and admiringly towards Germany, her precision and thoroughness, the intelligence with which she was mapping out her future, the energy with which her government provided for the health and good order of her towns.

Really, the elements of strong government were here all the time, if we knew how to use them. The Benthamites had seen, long ago, where the secret lay; and if, as we are told, the ghost of Bentham sometimes walks in Gower Street, it must have danced on the night when Ritchie's Local Government Bill was carried in 1888. That measure might be quoted in proof of Lord Salisbury's paradox.

No one had agitated for it; few were greatly interested in it; it was brought out of the departmental pigeon-hole where Dilke had left it, was accepted with almost universal approval, and may, without much exaggeration, be said to have transformed the

tissue of English existence.

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