Points of Friction
gathers in its wake. He was a firm upholder of the British Empire, hating compromise and guiltless of pacifism; but, having a natural gift for aridity, he saw no reason why the world should not be content to know things without feeling them, should not keep its eyes turned to legal institutions, its mind fixed upon political economy and international law. The force that lay back of Parliament annoyed him by the simple primitive way in which it beat drums, fired guns, and died to uphold the institutions which he prized; also because by doing these things it evoked in others certain simple and primitive sensations which he strove always to keep at bay. "We are rather disposed to laugh," he said, "when poets and orators try to conjure us with the name of England." Had he lived a few years longer, he would have known that England's salvation lies in the fact that her name is, to her sons, a thing to con-
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