Mr. Arthur Arnold finds fault with the Minister of 'War
for quoting the late Mr. Mill as saying that the Tory party was "a stupid party." What Mr. Mill did say, Mr. Arnold remarks, was some- thing very much less loose, namely, that "if a man were stupid, he was sure to be a Tory." In point of fact, Mr. Mill also said, in his essay on Representative Government, that "the Conservatives are, by the law of their existence, the stupidest party,"—which is very near indeed to Mr. Hardy's version of the remark ; but even if it were not so, it seems to us a mistake to find fault with the public for ignoring a somewhat fine distinction in what is either essen- tially a popular saying, or a thing that should not have been said at all. The real gist of Mr. Mill's dictum was that it took a cer- tain amount of vivacity to wish for improvement, and that the dull preference for things as they are is a chief root of Conservatism, —and this is fairly enough represented by the popular form of Mr. Mill's saying. Indeed it is at once the merit and the reproach of the Conservatives to feel this sympathy with established custom. The late Mr. l3agehot always said that the reason the English were so great politically was their relative stupidity, — their unimpressibility,—their slowness in taking in a new notion,—their reluctance to give up an old one. And what the English are to more mercurial races in this respect, that is English Conservatism to English Liberalism.
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