At Newport, on the same day (Wednesday), Lord Salisbury touched
on another theme, the survival of the irritable temper which former grievances have excited, long after those grievances have been removed. "Bear in mind that if you find great resistance, great discontent with what is, it very often does not represent any real opinion as to the actual and existing state of things. It is the echo and tradition that have come down from other times, when really there were grievances which had to be resisted. But the effect of such grievances is not only upon the time in which they exist. They come down from age to age, and men, many men, are now jealous and grudging of other classes, not because they suffer anything from the time, not because they are in any danger of suffering anything, but because they carry on un- ceasingly the tradition which they have received from their fathers, and reflect the politics and the personal feelings which were only justified by the politics of the past." That is unquestionably true. We believe that the Nonconfor mist jealousy of the Church is half of it at least a pure inheritance from times when Nonconformists were deprived of many and great privileges which they now enjoy in full. So also many of the Radical thunderings against the classes are mere faint reverberations of the thunder of other days reflected back from the wrongs of their forefathers. Political traditions are more easily evolved than extinguished.
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