Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/252

250 reform for a time, or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy. A mighty change, and, I believe, improvement, is at this moment going on in the world; but the revolution, to work out its great and best end, must be even more moral than political, though the one inevitably leads to the other. Nothing can be permitted to the few; rights and advantages were sent for all: but the few were at the fountain-head in Sir Robert Walpole's time. It is but justice to him to note how much he was in its advance. Nothing could be more enlightened than the encouragement he gave to our manufactories and colonies. Look, also, at his steady preservation of peace; what rest and what prosperity he gave to England. The great want of his administration was, as we have said before, the want of high principle: it was the ideal of common sense, but it was nothing more. Now, mere common sense never does any thing great; the noblest works of our nature, its exertions, its sacrifices, need