304 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Tlato, on the other hand, tells us that the great- 

 est of sophists and misleaders are the people of 

 Athens (who were at least as clever as the peo- 

 ple of England), when they in their assembly 

 make the Piivx and the rocks reecho to their 

 clamors. 



Putting aside this fallacy, which we cannot 

 help thinking still unconsciously influences opin- 

 ion, the question will amount to this : Take two 

 persons, one from the lower and another from 

 the higher classes, and propose to them any po- 

 litical question : which will be likely to give you 

 a right answer — the man who has had some kind 

 of education, or the man who has not passed 

 beyond a very moderate acquaintance with read- 

 ing and writing, probably somewhat the worse 

 for wear ? Stripped of the attributes of number 

 and power, can any one doubt as to the answer ? 

 Much may be said for the working-classes which 

 no one would venture to say of the individual 

 working-man taken at random, and yet, as I 

 have shown, numbers have nothing to do with 

 the question. 



The rationale of the case seems to me ex- 

 tremely simple. It is the nature of man to ac- 

 cept readily and approve heartily of that which 

 ho believes to be for his own interest, and where 

 lie has no personal interest he is disposed to be 

 acted on by kindly and generous emotions. Thus 

 far the lower and upper classes are much alike. 

 But the member of the higher class has the 

 means and probably the inclination to make him- 

 self acquainted with the real merits of the sub- 

 ject in question. The member of the lower 

 class has not, and is liable to be imposed upon 

 by those who have an interest in playing on his 

 fears and his passions. Besides all the sources 

 of error to which he is liable in common with 

 his more fortunate brother, he is liable to many 

 deceptions from which the other is exempt. The 

 defects of his education and training oblige him 

 to take most of his opinions at second hand, and 

 thus his chance of being right depends on the 

 hands into which he may chance to fall. His 

 teacher may be as ignorant as himself, or may 

 have reasons of his own for working on his pas- 

 sions or his credulity. Was ever paradox so 

 strange as to maintain that a man with all the 

 causes of error incident to the wisest, and sev- 

 eral more peculiarly his own, is less liable to er- 

 ror than they ? 



There being really, as it seems to me, nothing 

 to be said for the superiority of the lower classes 

 on abstract grounds, the advocates appeal to facts, 

 they pronounce that certain measures were bene- 



' ficial, and they declare that they were approved 

 of and supported by the working-classes. 



Mr. Hutton admits that the working-classes 

 are not to be relied on in matters concerning 

 peace or war. His candor does him honor, but 

 makes a fatal rent in his argument. For my own 

 part I should have been inclined to say that on 

 the whole the conduct of the working-classes in 

 the present crisis has done them honor, and to 

 have better hopes of their conduct with regard 

 to a war by which they will be the first to suffer 

 than on many other questions. Mr. Hutton says 

 let us appeal to experience. Yes, but what ex- 

 perience ? Not the direct experience of the feel- 

 ings of the lower classes, but the differences of 

 opinion which have existed between the peers 

 and the commons. Whatever the House of Com- 

 mons has done is assumed to be agreeable to the 

 working-classes, what the House of Lords has 

 done is assumed to be displeasing to them. With 

 the exception of the Reform Bill of 1832, and 

 perhaps in a slight degree of the bill of 1867, 

 there is not, that I am aware of, the slightest 

 evidence of any strong feeling or sympathy for 

 any one of the measures mentioned by Mr. Hut- 

 ton. I think we have a right to require some- 

 thing more than the fact that the House of Lords 

 disliked a particular bill and the House of Com- 

 mons approved it, before we assert that it excited 

 any warm sympathy among the lower classes, or 

 that they either knew or cared anything about it. 



In my humble judgment the most beneficial 

 laws which have been passed during the fifty 

 years which are now interposed between us and 

 the first Reform Bill, have been carried by the 

 moderate Liberal party, which it is now the fash- 

 ion to extinguish as fast as possible, without the 

 aid, in any pronounced or tangible shape, of the 

 working-classes, against the opposition of those 

 who yielded reluctantly not to the working-class- 

 es, but to irresistible conviction forced upon the 

 thinking and reading public that the lower classes 

 took very little interest in the matter. The lower 

 classes, as matters are going, will ere long be the 

 ruling power in the country. This seems to me 

 quite sufficient without the anticipatory flattery 

 of decking them with laurels which they never 

 won, and opinions which they never held. 



Mr. GLADSTONE.— My estimate of the com- 

 parative value of the popular judgment in polities 

 has, to use an expression of Milton's, "stumbled 

 some;" and minds in a state of apprehension are 

 apt to magnify the thing itself which has caused 

 their alarm, as well as the consequences which 

 they expect to flow from it. But I can hardly 



