and highly suggestive address, in which, referring to conservative Great Britain, he thus pictured a phase of current belief: "Political power is described as lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, with scanty regard for tradition or history. Democracy, they say, is going to write its own programme. The structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing half-hidden but serious alterations. Men discover a change of attitude towards law as law; a decline in reverence for institutions as institutions."
While, however, the influences at work are thus general and the manifestations whether on the other side of the Atlantic or here bear a strong resemblance, yet difference of conditions and detail—constitutional peculiarities, so to speak—must not be disregarded. One form of treatment may not be prescribed for all. In our case, therefore, it remains to consider how best to adapt this country and ourselves to the unforeseeable,—the navigation of uncharted waters; and this adaptation cannot be considered in any correct and helpful, because scientific, spirit, unless the cause of change is located. Surface manifestations are, in and of themselves, merely deceptive. A physician, diagnosing the chances of a patient, must first correctly ascertain, or at least ascertain with approximate correctness, the seat of the trouble under which the patient is suffering. So, we.
And here I must frankly confess to small respect for the politician,—the man whose voice is continually
