Yet the generation whose memories went back yet another thirty-six years had ...

Yet the generation whose memories went back yet another thirty-six years had seen and felt changes surely as great: the political revolution of 1830, the economic and social revolution produced by the railway and the steamship, the founding of the great Dominions.

I read constantly that the Victorians did this and the Victorians believed that; as if they had all lived within the sound of the town-crier's bell, and at all times behaved, and thought, and worshipped with the disciplined unanimity of a city state on a holy day. I ask myself, Who are these Victorians? By what mark are we to know them? What creed, what doctrine, what institution was there among them which was not at some time or other debated or assailed? I can think of two only: Representative Institutions and the Family.' I am speaking of sincere debate and earnest assault, of doubts widely felt, and grounded on the belief that there is a better way: and for the ordering of public and private life that age could imagine none better.

I know that at times its fancy, flushed perhaps by Carlyle, would stray towards some simpler, more heroic mode of government; and that it was not very willing, could readily find reasons for not being willing, to extend the best mode of government to lesser breeds without the law.

But, within the pale of civilized humanity, it had no doubts that Representative Institutions, if they were safeguarded from corruption, and if they were dominated by men with a high sense of the common good, afforded the only sure guarantee of public improvement or even stability. They were preservative, they were educative; they reconciled rulers and ruled, the cohesion of society with the rights and aspirations of its members; and the natural shortcomings of all representative bodies, vacillation, short views, slowness in action, were a price worth paying for their inestimable advantages.