Tories were, as usual, powerless against it; yet so strong has been
the vis inertiae of Whiggery that it has won a notable victory over
common-sense and sentiment combined, and has drawn over to it a
section of those hitherto known as Radicals, and probably would have
drawn all Radicals over but for the personal ascendancy of Mr.
Gladstone. The Whigs, seeing, if but dimly, that this Irish
Independence meant an attack on property, have been successful in
snatching the promised peace out of the people's hands, and in
preparing all kinds of entanglement and confusion for us for a long
while in their steady resistance to even the beginnings of
revolution.

This, therefore, is what Parliament looks to me: a solid central
party, with mere nebulous opposition on the right hand and on the
left. The people governed; that is to say, fair play amongst
themselves for the money-privileged classes to make the most of their
privilege, and to fight sturdily with each other in doing so; but the
government concealed as much as possible, and also as long as
possible; that is to say, the government resting on an assumed
necessary eternity of privilege to monopolize the means of the
fructification of labour.

For so long as that assumption is accepted by the ignorance of the
people, the Great Whig Rump will remain inexpugnable, but as soon as
the people's eyes are opened, even partially--and they begin to
understand the meaning of the words, the Emancipation of Labour--we
shall begin to have an assured hope of throwing off the basest and
most sordid tyranny which the world has yet seen, the tyranny of so-
called Constitutionalism.