Page:Australian views of England.djvu/13



HE state of political feeling in England at the present time is very peculiar, and scarcely admits of definite terms of description. It is not surprising that we hear people talk of a Conservative reaction, for certainly there exists a widespread distrust of extreme Liberalism, and a disposition, more or less manifest among all classes of society, to rest satisfied with the existing order of things. The civil discord in America, to an extent unjust to the Americans, has repelled and partly terrified the public mind; and anything that was felt to savour of American democracy would, I verily believe, be ill received in any great gathering of the people. The other day I heard a popular lecturer, Mr. George Dawson, discoursing to an audience of at least a thousand persons on the