ABSTRACT
INTERNATIONAL Policy had been published in 1866. It marked its authors as men whose views on home and foreign politics were to be listened to, if not followed, and from that time onwards, the little group of Positivists in England and France strove to guide public opinion on the great questions of the day. Were they but voices crying in the wilderness? Little as they would have acknowledged it, theirs was a heroic effort to bring the basic principles of Christianity into political, and above all, into international life—a task from which official Christendom had shrunk. They stood out above party—making for righteousness—as they saw it. In England, John Morley, in France, Gambetta, were influenced by their views; but though Beesly, now head of the English Positivists, came before the public as spokesman of the body—a brilliant and trenchant spokesman—and Bridges, toiling at his official duties, was unheard, it was his hand that upheld the torch of idealism in the little group of thinkers, his counsels and his judgment which influenced their policy.
