Last Saturday, Mr. Balfour was admitted an honorary member of
the Merchant Taylors' Company, which celebrated the five hundred and ninety-second anniversary of its founda- tion on that day. Mr. Balfour, of course, had to respond to the toast of the honorary members, and remarked that there is exceedingly little territory in Europe held by a title so ancient as that by which the present Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company holds his place. The Company, he said, fulfilled a great duty at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and also a great duty at the end of the nineteenth, and so showed their power of adapting their institution both to the old traditions and to the changing needs of changing. times. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, they had helped to build up the first tiers of the great fabric of English commerce. Ivow they no longer discharged functions of that kind, but were devoting their great powers and great means- to works of public utility in more directions than one. Even in the British Legislature itself there was a similar change going on. Social problems were coming to the front, and the difficulty was, under the democratic institutions of to-day, to. attack those problems in the right spirit and without too much servility to that popular feeling which representative institutions rightly require representative bodies to consult. And then he enlarged, as we have pointed out in another column, on the great difficulty of avoiding a sort of prostra- tion before popular whims and popular ignorance which takes all the force out of representative institutions, and turns the strength of democracy into sheer weakness and caprice. Mr- Balfour's own example ought, indeed, to persuade men who hope to emulate his success that the people like nothing better than the calm assertion of an independent will and firm resolve to benefit them in spite of their own whims. That is- the true secret of his success as an Irish Minister, and if he succeeds equally as Leader of the House of Commons, it will be the true secret of his success there.
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