Sir Stafford Northcote, who presided at the Congress, laid it
-down in his opening address that the great social desideratum of the -day is to teach the English people to support and co-operate with Parliament and the Government, instead of wasting, as we now so -often do, the greater part of the total energy needed for social improvement, by quarrelling about the persons by whom it shall be done. In the course of a somewhat miscellaneous and rather too scrappy address upon this text, he maintained that we should soon need three new Ministries, a Ministry of Health, a Ministry of Education, and a Ministry of Justice. "The present day, however," added Sir Stafford, "is the day of Royal Commissions ; that of Ministries is yet to come." That is, it is a day of ouspended animation, for Royal Commissions mostly mean inves- tigating over again what you are completely master of already, because you have not Mind or nerve to decide on the remedy and seek excuses for delay. But is not that day very near its close ? The Irish Church measure, the Endowed Schools' measure, and the promise to legislate without further inquiry both on the Irish land question and English primary education, look like it. Sir Stafford's imagination is still under the spell of the system which sprang out of Government by a minority,—Government by a tenant- at-will.
Social science either did not prosper in its discussions, or it was very badly reported. The discussions both on the colonial diffi- culty and on infanticide read like a number of raw opinions blurted out without exposition and almost without argument. One man says he is against any sacrifice of the interests of the mother country to the interests of the colony ; another man says, he is against the sacrifice of the interests of the colony to the interests of the mother country, and so the opinions go on alternating with- out either reason or rhyme. One man says women who put their children to death are all demonstrably insane ; another says they ought not to be allowed to be delivered in private, —as if they applied for a licence for a private delivery which could be refused them,—and nothing comes out of the discussion, as reported, except a vote that capital punishment should no longer be the penalty for the murder of children by the mothers at the time of birth ; that still-born infants ought to be registered ; and that the number of newly-born children found in the streets should be published by the Registrar-General every week ! Mild results these of deliberative wisdom, and stilt milder reasons for those results! Either the Bristol Congress is exceptionally unfortunate in its reports, or it has not been a very great stimulus to the mind of the nation.
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