is not knowledge, indispensable though that may be, but practical wisdom. It is, in other words, what, on its more ordinary levels we call good sense, and what, as found in the statesman, Burke calls prudence,' and magnifies as the mother of all the political virtues. For this, and this alone, is the faculty which enables its possessor, not merely to know facts and apprehend principles, but to apply principles to facts in the thousand concrete decisions which have to be made by politicians in their actual contact with circumstances and conduct of affairs. And we know-for he has left us in no manner of doubt-where Burke believed this quality was to be found, and also where it was not to be found. It was to be found conspicuously in his natural aristocracy' and, though in greatly diminished degree, in the close electorates that stood behind them it was not to be found in those 'whose talk is of bullocks,' and suchlike. In the former his faith is firm; in the latter he has no faith at all.

Nor is this attitude unreasonable. Practical wisdom, even in its more modest form of common sense, is not to be lightly reckoned upon in mankind at large. It is none too common. It is not the gift of nature, nor can it be got from books, nor imparted like knowledge in schools or lecture-rooms. It comes, mainly at any rate, through practice and the actual conduct of life. It is by making decisions, sometimes by making blunders, that the blunders

come to be fewer and the decisions sounder; nor will wisdom ever emerge, not even when natural gifts and knowledge are present in abundance, unless there be experience to furnish the opportunities for its exercise and slowly won development. And should it happen, by the exigencies of a humble lot and a contracted life, that such opportunities are denied, it is in vain to look for 'prudence' there, except in the non-political form that suffices to deal with the small concerns of private life. This is what Burke undoubtedly felt. It is not necessary to place his estimate of men too low, by the supposition that he would have denied the existence of sagacity and common sense in the ordinary conduct of their private lives. But when it came to the larger affairs of politics, it was different. These were quite beyond the scope of the rank and file; beyond their experience, beyond their knowledge, beyond their judgment, beyond their competence. Hence their exclusion.

It is not for democracy to deny the strength of this position. It cannot deny that, if the opportunities for the development of any human faculty be absent, that faculty will never be found except in meagre and inadequate degree; and political faculty is no exception to this rule. On the contrary, the fullest and frankest recognition of this fact is precisely one of the points on which democracy must insist. It must insist upon it in order

that it may go on to affirm that, under the conditions of our modern social life, these opportunities, which rightly count for so much, are no longer denied to those classes whom Burke excludes. For in the modern state, the preparation for participation in political life has come to be far wider than politics. That astonishing growth in social organisation which has signalised the nineteenth century, has covered the land with a vast network not only of private enterprises, but of societies, leagues, unions, combinations, clubs, whose name is legion. Many of them are, of course, not in the stricter sense political. They have not been organised for strictly political ends at all: their aims have been commercial, industrial, social. Yet none the less on that account, they fulfil a political function of the first importance, because they provide a school and training-ground of civic quality. Be it tradesunion, benefit club, friendly society, co-operative enterprise, charitable association, or what not, and be they never so diverse in the ends or interests for which they stand, they are all alike in this: they lift their members out of a narrowing absorption in private life; they familiarise them with public ends and the conduct of affairs on a large scale; and they teach them, through actual experience, the value and the discipline of organised collective effort. And if we add to this that reiterated strides in parliamentary reform, with universal and com

pulsory education as its ally, have opened the door for participation in the many graded activities of rural, municipal, and national politics, it is far from Utopian to believe that, by the cumulative force of all these influences, the rank and file of the democratic State must steadily advance, not only in political information, but-a still greater gain—in that capacity for affairs which in Burke's estimate, and possibly enough in Burke's age, they so conspicuously lacked. This is that 'education in the widest sense of the word' on which J. S. Mill so rightly relied the education of actual participation in organised social and political work. It is the only finally efficient school of political good sense and practical wisdom.

It does not follow from this, however, that democracy has little to learn from the teaching of Burke. On two cardinal points at any rate, it carries a message that is greatly needed: the one, his conception of a representative as different from a delegate; the other, his plea for a 'natural aristocracy.' These are intimately connected, but we may take them in turn.

(c) Representatives and Delegates

It is often supposed, and sometimes regarded as inevitable, that in proportion as democracy runs its course the representative must needs dwindle

into the delegate. Not unnaturally. It would be a childish ignorance to place a democracy in power and to fancy that it is not certain to use it. Only innocence or folly would put a weapon into energetic hands without reckoning that it will certainly be vigorously handled. And they live in a fool's paradise who think, if there be any such, that a democratic electorate will not be minded to take its destinies into its own hands. Gladstone once said and significantly enough the words come in a context in which he is pleading for the extension of the franchise-that 'the people must be passive.' He even said it was so 'written with a pen of iron on the rock of human destiny.'1 But the passivity, if that be the word for it, must be understood with reservations. For it is of the essence of the democratic spirit and ideal to strive to make the whole community, not only in the occasional crises of elections but in the not less important intervals between elections, politically alive in the lives of all its citizens. Its claim to foster, more than any other form of government, the organic unity which is the prime condition of a nation's strength, depends, as has been already urged, upon its being content with nothing less. Nor can there be a doubt that this must vitally affect the relation of electorate and representative. As matter of fact it has shattered beyond recovery the Whig theory and practice of 1 Gleanings of Past Years, vol. i.

2 P. 226.