inevitably, win in the struggle of life.

Meanwhile, in this fact is to be found the most weighty, if not the only argument against manhood suffrage, which would admit many—but too many, alas!—who are still mere boys in mind.  To a reasonable household suffrage it cannot apply.  The man who (being almost certainly married, and having children) can afford to rent a £5 tenement in a town, or in the country either, has seen quite enough of life, and learnt quite enough of it, to form a very fair judgment of the man who offers to represent him in Parliament; because he has learnt, not merely something of his own interest, or that of his class, but—what is infinitely more important—the difference between the pretender and the honest man.

The causes of this state of society, which is peculiar to Britain, must be sought far back in the ages.  It would seem that the distinction between “earl and churl” (the noble and the non-noble freeman) was crushed out in this island by the two Norman conquests—that of the Anglo-Saxon nobility by Sweyn and Canute; and that of the Anglo-Danish nobility by William and his Frenchmen.  Those two terrible calamities, following each other in the short space of fifty years, seem to have welded together, by a community of suffering, all ranks and races, at least south of the Tweed; and when the English rose after the storm, they rose as one homogeneous people, never to be governed again by an originally alien race.  The English nobility were, from the time of Magna Charta, rather an official nobility, than, as in most continental countries, a separate caste; and whatever caste tendencies had developed themselves before the Wars of the Roses (as such are certain to do during centuries of continued wealth and power), were crushed out by the great revolutionary events of the next hundred years.  Especially did the discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle with Spain, the outburst of commerce and colonisation during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, help toward this good result.  It was in vain for the Lord Oxford of the day, sneering at Raleigh’s sudden elevation, to complain that as on the virginals, so in the State, “Jacks went up, and heads went down.”  The proudest noblemen were not ashamed to have their ventures on the high seas, and to send their younger sons trading, or buccaneering, under the conduct of low-born men like Drake, who “would like to see the gentleman that would not set his hand to a rope, and hale and draw with the mariners.”  Thus sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe bodily labour, which the educated class of no nation save our own has ever felt; and which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home or abroad.  Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the ballad sets forth) the squire’s son might be a “’prentice good,” and marry

“The bailiff’s daughter dear
That dwelt at Islington,”

without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the scutcheon of his ancestors.  That which has saved England from a central despotism, such as crushed, during the eighteenth century, every nation on the Continent, is the very same peculiarity which makes the advent of the masses to a share in political power safe and harmless; namely, the absence of caste, or rather (for there is sure to be a moral fact underlying and causing every political fact) the absence of that wicked pride which perpetuates caste; forbidding those to intermarry whom nature and fact pronounce to be fit mates before God and man.

These views are not mine only.  They have been already set forth so much more forcibly by M. de Tocqueville, that I should have thought it unnecessary to talk about them, were not the rhetorical phrases, “Caste,” “Privileged Classes,” “Aristocratic Exclusiveness,” and such-like, bandied about again just now, as if they represented facts.  If there remain in this kingdom any facts which correspond to those words, let them be abolished as speedily as possible: but that such do remain was not the opinion of the master of modern political philosophy, M. de Tocqueville.

He expresses his surprise “that the fact which distinguishes England from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light on her peculiarities, . . . has not attracted more attention, . . . and that habit has rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English themselves—that England was the only country in which the system of caste had been not only modified, but effectually destroyed.  The nobility and the middle classes followed the same business, embraced the same professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with each other.  The daughter of the greatest nobleman” (and this, if true of the eighteenth century, has become far more true of the nineteenth) “could already, without disgrace, marry a man of yesterday.” . . .

“It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other.  It would have been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long time past, no nobility, properly so called, have existed, if we take the word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained.” . . .

“For several centuries the word ‘gentleman’” (he might have added, “burgess”) “has altogether changed its meaning in England; and the word ‘roturier’ has ceased to exist.  In each succeeding century it is applied to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale” (as the “bagman” of Pickwick has become, and has deserved to become, the “commercial gentleman” of our day).  “At length it travelled with the English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen indiscriminately.  Its history is that of democracy itself.” . . .

“If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not especially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, because its outline was indistinct, and its limit unknown: not so much because any man might be admitted into it, as because it was impossible to say with certainty when he took rank there: so that all who approached it might look on themselves as belonging to it; might take part in its rule, and derive either lustre or profit from its influence.”

Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever their special political party, are conservative in the best sense of that word.

For there are not three, but only two, classes in England; namely, rich and poor: those who live by capital (from the wealthiest landlord to the smallest village shopkeeper); and those who live by hand-labour.  Whether the division between those two classes is increasing or not, is a very serious question.  Continued legislation in favour of the hand-labourer, and a beneficence towards him, when in need, such as no other nation on earth has ever shown, have done much to abolish the moral division.  But the social division has surely been increased during the last half century, by the inevitable tendency, both in commerce and agriculture, to employ one large capital, where several small ones would have been employed a century ago.  The large manufactory, the large shop, the large estate, the large farm, swallows up the small ones.  The yeoman, the thrifty squatter who could work at two or three trades as well as till his patch of moor, the hand-loom weaver, the skilled village craftsman, have all but disappeared.  The handworker, finding it more and more difficult to invest his savings, has been more and more tempted to squander them.  To rise to the dignity of a capitalist, however small, was growing impossible to him, till the rise of that co-operative movement, which will do more than any social or political impulse in our day for the safety of English society, and the loyalty of the English working classes.  And meanwhile—ere that movement shall