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I.TO TEE EDITOII OF VIZ " SPECTATOR:1
Sin,—I happened the other day to come across the following passage in Lecky's "Map of Life" (chap. 16), and wondered
whether others besides myself might not recognise the aptness of its application to the political situation to-day. The ages of at least ten of the leading statesmen taking part in the fiscal controversy—Mr. Chamberlain, the Duke of Devon- shire, Lord Spencer, Lord G-oschen, Sir William Harcourt, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry Fowler, Mr. Ritchie, and Mr. John Morley—range from sixty-five to seventy-six, a fact which, I think, lends point to the quotation
In the case of men who have played a great part in public affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his duty. In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were very rare, and in parlia- mentary life almost unknown. In our own century there have been brilliant exceptions, but in most cases it will be found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations, but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can, with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution, deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities. They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men, and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable obstacle to improvement."
Of the ten statesmen mentioned, it has been said frequently enough of nine of them by their opponents that they have lost "the power of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities,"—a reproach which could also be hurled against a septuagenarian mathematician who main- tained his opinion that two and two make four. But of how many of the ten could it be said that they have been assailed by "a new set of temptations," or that their heads have been
turned am, Sir, &c., P.
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