well-being of all his subjects that he might attain some personal and private end. The French have been cured of their most dangerous patriotic ignorance— that concerning the military strength of the countryby the war of 1870, but the cure was of a costly

nature.

Patriotism has been so commonly associated with a wilful closing of the eyes against unpleasant facts, that those who prefer truth to illusion are often considered unpatriotic. Yet, surely ignorance has not the immense advantage over knowledge of having all patriotism on her side. There is a far higher and better patriotism than that of ignorance, there is a love of country that shows itself in anxiety for its best welfare, and does not remain satisfied with the vain delusion of a fancied superiority in everything. It is the interest of England as a nation to be accurately informed about all that concerns her position in the world, and it is impossible for her to receive this information if a stupid national vanity is always ready to take offence when it is offered. It is desirable for England to know exactly in what degree she is a military power, and also how she stands with reference to the naval armaments of other nations, not as they existed in the days of Nelson but as they will exist next year. It is the interest of England to know by what tenure she holds India, just as in the reign of George the Third it would have been very much the interest of England to know accurately both the rights of the American colonists and their strength. I cannot imagine any circumstances that might make ignorance more desirable for a free people than knowledge. With enslaved peoples the case is different:

the less they know, the greater, perhaps, are their chances of enjoying the dull kind of somnolent happiness which alone is attainable by them, but this is a kind of happiness that no citizen of a free country would desire.

ESSAY XX.

CONFUSIONS.

SURELY the analytical faculty must be very rare, or we should not so commonly find people confounding together things essentially distinct. Any one who possesses that faculty naturally, and has followed some occupation which strengthens it, must be continually amused if he has a humorous turn, or irritated if he is irascible, by the astounding mental confusions in which men contentedly pass their lives. To be just, this account ought to include both sexes, for women indulge in confusions even more frequently than men, and are less disposed to separate things when they have once been jumbled together.

A confusion of ideas in politics which is not uncommon amongst the enemies of all change is to believe that whoever desires the reform of some law wants to do something that is not legal, and has a rebellious subversive spirit. Yet the reformer is not a rebel; it is indeed the peculiar distinction of his position not to be a rebel, for there has never been a real reformer (as distinguished from a revolutionist) who wished to do anything illegal. He desires, certainly, to do something which is not legal just at present, but he does not wish to do it so long as it remains in the condition of illegality. He wishes first to make it legal by obtaining legislative

sanction for his proposal, and then to do it when it shall have become as legal as anything else, and when all the most conservative people in the kingdom will be strenuous in its defence as "part and parcel of the law of the land."

Another confusion in political matters which has always been extremely common is that between private and public liberty. Suppose that a law were enacted to the effect that each British subject without exception should go to Mass every Sunday morning on pain of death, and should take the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Holy Communion, involving auricular confession, at Easter; such a law would not be an infringement of the sensible liberty of Roman Catholics, because they do these things already. Then they might say, "People talk of the tyranny of the law, yet the law is not tyrannical at all; we enjoy perfect liberty in England, and it is most unreasonable to say that we do not." The Protestant part of the community would exclaim that such a law was an intolerable infringement of liberty, and would rush to arms to get rid of it. This is the distinction between private and public liberty. There is private liberty when some men are not interfered with in the ordinary habits of their existence; and there has always been much of such private liberty under the worst of despotisms; but there is not public liberty until every man in the country may live according to his own habits, so long as he does not interfere with the rights of others. Here is a distinction plain enough to be evident to a very commonplace understanding, yet the admirers of tyrants are often successful in producing a confusion. between the two things, and in persuading people that there was "ample liberty" under some foreign despot

because they themselves, when they visited the country that lay prostrate under his irresistible power, were allowed to eat good dinners, and drive about unmolested, and amuse themselves by day and by night according to every suggestion of their fancy.

Many confusions have been intentionally maintained by political enemies in order to cast odium on their adversaries, so that it becomes of great importance to a political cause that it should not bear a name with two meanings, or to which it may be possible to give another meaning than that which was originally intended. word "Radical" is an instance of this. According to the enemies of radicalism it has always meant a political principle that strikes at the root of the constitution, but it was not that meaning of the word which induced the first Radicals to commit the imprudence of adopting it. The term referred to agriculture rather than tree-felling, the original idea being to uproot abuses as a gardener pulls weeds up by the roots. I distinctly remember my first boyish notion of the Radicals. I saw them in a sort of sylvan picture, violent savage men armed with sharp axes and hewing away at the foot of a majestic oak that stood for the glory of England. Since then I have become acquainted with another instance of the unfortunate adoption of a word which may be plausibly perverted from its meaning. The French republican motto is Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and to this day there is hardly an English newspaper that does not from time to time sneer at the French Republicans for aspiring to equality, as if equality were not impossible in the nature of things, and as if, supposing an unnatural equality to be established to-day, the operation of natural