It has its main tendencies still to form. We hear
promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of
education, and I know not what; but those promises come rather from its
advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for
superseding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it
has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of
well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with advantage
continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that this is
_an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters increased
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy_. Mr.
Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class
liberalism and the world of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas
from the world of middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always
inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen,
Englishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class
liberalism.
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