44 SCIENTIFIC WOKK, 1860-1865 



extraneous motives for voting and scarce any would vote 

 but the middle and upper middle classes. The more I com- 

 pare your and our papers, the more I see that you have no 

 representatives of our lower middle and lowest classes, 

 except perhaps in New York of our masses, in short any 

 more than you have representatives of our Aristocracy. 

 You represent our middle and upper middle classes, who wield 

 all the power with us as it is. We are in no way comparable 

 as a people ; our political virtues and vices are quite different. 

 Upon the whole you are the gainers ; but it will not last. 

 You will one day have a poverty smitten residuum that will 

 yearly increase in the same ratio as wealth at the other end 

 a class who won't be educated, and who will vote for equal 

 distribution of property and of all God's gifts, for no ' meum ' 

 and ' tuum,' but for ' God for us all,' and that god their 

 bellies. Power and wealth will lapse into the hands of the 

 strong with you, and laws will keep it there. 



I also notice the Nation pitching into the Londoners for 

 the state of London during the snow, and citing it as a proof 

 of the lamentable inability of the English to improve &c. ; 

 and on same day in the New York paper were frightful letters 

 on the state of the river and ferries of New York, where 

 people were kept all day and could not cross. So we go on 

 every day ; it is the Beam and the Mote, and so it will be 

 to the end of the Chapter. 



The Herbarium affair is now settled, 1 and I expect the 

 money next week, not before it is wanted for my wants and 

 position here, which I must have abandoned, were it not 

 settled. I could not live on here without a complete altera- 

 tion of all my household affairs, on my present income, 

 besides which I must have given up all my functions as 

 head of my own and Henslow's family, and mover of 

 Botanists, &c. 



To A. Gray 



March 12, 1868. 



Anent politics I have nothing to say. On both sides of 

 the water we seem to suffer under the inevitable evils of our 

 respective forms of Government, and all I believe is that if 

 you had our form you would be ten times worse than you 



1 I.e. the purchase by Government of Sir William's collections and library 

 (see p. 48). 



