The Duty of Electors

Abstract

IN his address to his Greenwich constituents Mr. Gladstone has undoubtedly attacked a weak point of human nature, by his announcement of a large balance, the promise of the removal of the income-tax, and other reductions in taxation; but those who really have the welfare of their country at heart cannot help feeling that, by making one doubtful good all-prominent, he has placed too far in the background many of those points which are daily becoming of more and more importance to the national welfare. Our country depends for its high position among nations, not only on its resources in coal and iron, but also, and more securely, on the mental capacity of its people, whose peculiarity is that they have the power of always using the resources at their disposal to better advantage than any others. We in nearly all cases have taken the lead in invention. A discovery, for instance, is made by which the amount of coal required to produce a certain amount of useful work is diminished greatly; this is adopted by others of our. selves, and is gradually spread to other countries, not however before sufficient time has elapsed to place us on the way to another method, which will have as great advantages over the new one as that had over the one which preceded it. There are those amongst us who, with our national tendency to depreciate our own abilities and resources, carefully compile statistics show that our gradual decline and destruction are inevitable in a certain definite number of years. They, however, inevitably leave out of the question the potentiality, as it may be termed, of the British brain.