shall have to enact that many inmates of our hospitals and lunatic asylums be hanged. There is thus a fundamental inconsistency in the English method of dealing with immorality; it is made up of opposite views, some of them extreme in contrary directions. But by virtue of the national tendency to compromise, these conflicting tendencies work in a fairly harmonious manner. The result is that the general state of English morality—notwithstanding, and perhaps partly by reason of, its prudish anxiety to leave unpleasant matters alone—is at least as satisfactory as that of countries where much more logical and thorough methods are in favour.
In the United States we see yet another attitude towards immorality. It is, indeed, related to the English attitude, necessarily so, since the most ancient and fundamental element of it was carried over to America by the English Puritans, who cherished in the extreme form alike the English passion for individualism and the English fervour of religious idealism. These germs have been too potent for destruction even under all the new influences of American life. But they are not altogether in harmony with those influences, and the result has been that the American attitude towards immorality has sometimes looked rather like a caricature of the English method. The influx of a vast and racially confused population with the over-rapid development of urbanization which has necessarily followed, opens an immense field for idealistic individualism to attempt reforms. But this individualism has not been held in check by the English spirit of compromise, which is not a part of Puritanism, and it has thus tended alike to excess and to impotence.