A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



307 



structure I have laid upon it, which is simply 

 this : that now, when we have enfranchised one 

 full half of this class, which felt and judged on 

 the greatest matters so much more soundly than 

 we did, and that half the more questionable of 

 the two, it will not be well to withhold the cor- 

 responding boon, demanded by equality, by grow- 

 ing intelligence, and by unquestioned docility, 

 from the other moiety. Indeed, until this great 

 basis of fact, on which we stand, can be shaken, 

 it appears to me that we might be warranted in 

 declining to adduce argument on details, and 

 might simply ask our opponents to present their 

 proof that the working population, who, to say 

 the very least, have not opposed the good and 

 great measures that have been so uniformly re- 

 sisted by the majority of the higher class, ought 

 by rights to be shut out from the franchise which 

 that higher class enjoys. 



I have indicated that it is on the whole in the 

 moral sphere that we are to look for the causes 

 of a superiority, which is within its own limits 

 undeniable. Moral elements of character are as 

 true, and often as powerful, a factor, in framing 

 judgments upon matters of human interest and 

 action, as intellectual forces. But there is anoth- 

 er element in the question, not less vital: the 

 character of the surroundings, the contiguous 

 objects of attraction and repulsion, the beguiling 

 and tempting agencies, in the midst of which 

 we live. Those, who have but a sufficiency for 

 life, set a less value perhaps upon it, and certain- 

 ly upon its incidental advantages, than those who 

 live in the midst of superfluities varying from a 

 few to a multitude almost numberless. These 

 superfluities are like the threads that bound down 

 Gulliver to the soil ; and they form habits of 

 mind, which pass into our fixed mental and moral 

 constitution, and cease to be objects of distinct 

 consciousness. If it be true that wealth and ease 

 bring with them, in a majority of cases, an in- 

 creased growth in the hardening crust of egotism 

 and selfishness, the deduction thereby made from 

 the capacity of right judgment in large and most 

 important questions may be greater than the 

 addition which leisure, money, and opportunity, 

 have allowed. I touch here upon deep mines of 

 truth, never yet explored, nor within the power 

 of human intelligence to explore fully, though we 

 are taught to believe in an Eye that has observed, 

 and a Mind that has accurately registered, the 

 whole. Even in the present twilight of our prac- 

 tical and moral knowledge, we may perceive, by 

 every form of instance, how often the wisdom of 

 <!ove, goodness, and simplicity wins, even in the 



races of this world, against the wisdom of crafty 

 and astute self-seeking. Even more is this true 

 in the fields of open thought, than in the direct 

 and sharp competitions of life. In questions to 

 which his budding knowledge reaches, even the 

 child has often a more serene and effective sense 

 of justice than a grown man ; and a partial analo- 

 gy obtains between the relations of age and those 

 of class. History affords, I think, a grand and 

 powerful illustration of the argument in the case 

 of the acceptance of Christianity ; which accept- 

 ance will be admitted, I presume, to have been 

 a great advance upon the road of truth and of 

 human welfare. Was it the wealthy and the 

 learned who, with their vast advantages, and their 

 supposed exemption from special sources of er- 

 ror, outstripped their humbler fellow-creatures in 

 bowing their heads to the authority of the gos- 

 pel ? Did scribes and Pharisees, or did shep- 

 herds and fishermen, yield the first, most, and 

 readiest converts to the Saviour and the company 

 of his apostles? It was not an arbitrary act, 

 for there is no such act, of the Almighty, which 

 " hid these things from the wise and prudent, 

 and revealed them unto babes." The whole code 

 of our Saviour's teaching on the condition of rich 

 and poor with reference to the acceptance of moral 

 truth is not the rhetoric of an enthusiast, nor the 

 straitened philosophy of a local notable, who mis- 

 took the accidents of one time and place for 

 principles of universal knowledge. They were 

 the utterances of the wisdom that 



"Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 

 Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 



There was not, be it observed, any denial of the 

 intellectual superiority which, upon the whole or 

 in the majority of cases, attends upon wealth and 

 leisure. But that curtain was lifted, which, woven 

 by self-love, hides from us many unpalatable 

 truths. As the barbarian, with his undeveloped 

 organs, sees and hears at distances which the 

 senses of the cultured state cannot overpass, and 

 yet is utterly deficient as to fine details of sound 

 and color, even so it seems that, in judging of 

 the great questions of policy which appeal to the 

 primal truths and laws of our nature, those classes 

 may excel who, if they lack the opportunities, yet 

 escape the subtile perils, of the wealthy state. 

 True they receive much of their instruction from 

 persons of the classes above them, from the "mi- 

 nority of the minority;" but this in no way 

 mends the argument on behalf of the majority of 

 the minority, who habitually reject, as it passes 

 by their doors, that teaching which the men of 



