One of the gravest dangers of the present political system in this country is the acceptance of expediency as the guiding principle of legislation. Moral principles have no longer any practical influence in government. The disadvantages of employing ecclesiastics in high offices in the Government, always greatly exaggerated, had the important counter-balancing advantage of the recognition of moral principles in legislation.

Political ecclesiastics might be corrupt, though there is no historical evidence to show that they were more corrupt than the modern lawyer-politician, business-politician, or demagogue-politician. It would be difficult to show that Holy Orders, per se, are more demoralising than the verbal subtleties of the Statute Book, stock and share broking (or pushing), or even a righteous indignation at the sweating of the working classes.

A statesman or politician in Holy Orders (to-day this suggests the Devil in Holy Water) must, at the worst, make some show of informing with moral principles his public acts and those for which he is officially responsible. He has some acquaintance with moral principles drawn from the Christian code, which is the code permeating our culture and civilisation and therefore not foreign to the minds and consciences of the people. The lawyer, business man or demagogue may be quite ignorant of Christian moral principles, except in so far as he has to adapt himself to the effect of them on his fellows. He may deliberately discard such principles and only permit them to influence his actions as necessary but regrettable expedients.