We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main
points, we have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not
marched victoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently
upon the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which
sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up our
own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great
movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years ago! It was
directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's _Apology_[411] may see,
against what in one word may be called "Liberalism." Liberalism
prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it was
necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford movement
was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every shore:--
"Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?"[412]
But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it really
broke the Oxford movement? It was the great middle-class liberalism,
which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of
1832,[413] and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere,
free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial
fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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