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 have spread
throughout the length and breadth of the land, and have been applied, as
it surely will be some day, not only to distribution, not only to
manufacture, but to agriculture likewise--till then, the best judges of
the working men's worth must be their employers; and especially the
employers of the northern manufacturing population. What their judgment
is, is sufficiently notorious. Those who depend most on the working men,
who have the best opportunities of knowing them, trust them most
thoroughly. As long as great manufacturers stand forward as the
political sponsors of their own workmen, it behoves those who cannot have
had their experience, to consider their opinion as conclusive. As for
that "influence of the higher classes" which is said to be endangered
just now; it will exist, just as much as it deserves to exist. Any man
who is superior to the many, whether in talents, education, refinement,
wealth, or anything else, will always be able to influence a number of
men--and if he thinks it worth his while, of votes--by just and lawful
means. And as for unjust and unlawful means, let those who prefer them
keep up heart. The world will go on much as it did before; and be always
quite bad enough to allow bribery and corruption, jobbery and nepotism,
quackery and arrogance, their full influence over our home and foreign
policy. An extension of the suffrage, however wide, will not bring about