Nor can he fail to admire the insight which organizes "the agitation of the popular mind," not as "the forerunner of violent commotions" but to "animate all parts of the state." Therein De Lolme had grasped the real essence of party government.
It was, of course, no more than symptomatic of his time that cabinet and prime minister should have escaped his notice.

A more serious defect was his inability, with the Wilkes contest prominently in his notice, to see that the people had assumed a new importance.

For the masses, indeed, De Lolme had no enthusiasm.

"A passive share," he thought, "was the only one that could, with safety to the state, be trusted" to the humble man.

"The greater part," he wrote, "of those who compose this multitude, taken up with the care of providing for their subsistence, have neither sufficient leisure, nor even, in consequence of their imperfect education, the degree of information, requisite for functions of this kind." Such an attitude blinded him to the significance of the American conflict, which he saw unattended by its moral implications.