there is none.  Again, the first apostles of Co-operation expected nothing less than that their ideas would be universally, immediately, and ardently adopted.  That was a good many years ago.  The method of Co-operation still offers the most wonderful vision of universal welfare, easily attainable on the simple condition of honesty, ever put before humanity; yet we see how little has been achieved and how numerous have been the failures.  Again, though the advantages of temperance are continually preached to working men, beer remains the national beverage; yet even those of us who would rather see the working classes sober and self-restrained than water-drinkers by Act of Parliament or solemn pledge, acknowledge how good it is that the preaching of temperance was begun.  Again, we have got most of those Points for which the Chartists once so passionately struggled.  As for those we have not got, there is no longer much enthusiasm left for them.  The world does not seem so far very substantially advanced by the concession of the Points; yet we would not willingly give them back and return to the old order.  Again, we have opened free museums, containing all kinds of beautiful things:  the people visit them in thousands; yet they remain ignorant of Art, and have no yearning discoverable for Art.  In spite of this, we would not willingly close the museums.

The dreamer, in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially takes into account.  These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed, indolence, and the Easy Way.  There are doubtless others, because in humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these are the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with an incurable indolence of mind or body, which keeps them rooted in the old grooves and destroys every germ of ambition at its first appearance.

The latest failure of the Well-intentioned, so far as we have yet found out, is the Education Act, for which the London rate has now mounted to nine-pence in the pound.  It is a failure, like the emancipation of the slaves; because, though it has done some things well, it has wholly failed to achieve the great results confidently predicted for it by its advocates in the year ’68.  What is more, we now understand that it never can achieve those results.

It was going, we were told, to give all English children a sound and thorough elementary education.  It was, further, going to inspire those children with the ardour for knowledge, so that, on leaving school, they would carry on their studies and continually advance in learning.  It was going to take away the national reproach of ignorance, and to make us the best educated country in the world.