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 of Progressive Republicanism, has less difficulty in understanding the paradox. It was not indifference to the welfare of the masses that induced Disraeli's belief in the rule of a selected class, but a distrust of popular ability and judgment, and a conviction (acknowledged in our own time as a truth and the real salvation of democracy) that efficiency can come only from expert knowledge and training. From such a viewpoint satire would naturally be directed not against the people but against its incapable and dishonest leadership. Peacock's scorn of this exploitation of popular ignorance and helplessness is taken up by both his nearest successors, expressed, as it happens, in a pair of portraits of the ward-politician type.

Pelham repudiates Vincent's proposed new party because of its bad personnel, men—

"* * * who talk much, who perform nothing—who join ignorance of every principle of legislation to indifference for every benefit to the people:—who are full of 'wise saws', but empty of 'modern instances'—who level upwards, and trample downwards—and would only value the ability you are pleased to impute to me, in the exact proportion that a sportsman values the ferret, that burrows for his pleasure, and destroys for his interest."

Montacute draws a more concrete and ironic picture:

"Find a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses nevertheless considerable talent; who has official aptitude, a volubility of routine rhetoric, great perseverance, a love of af-*