selected than they could have made the solar system.

As I have endeavoured to show in this volume, the deference of the
old electors to their betters was the only way in which our old
system could be maintained. No doubt countries can be imagined in
which the mass of the electors would be thoroughly competent to form
good opinions; approximations to that state happily exist. But such
was not the state of the minor English shopkeepers. They were just
competent to make a selection between two sets of superior ideas; or
rather--for the conceptions of such people are more personal than
abstract--between two opposing parties, each professing a creed of
such ideas. But they could do no more. Their own notions, if they
had been cross-examined upon them, would have been found always most
confused and often most foolish. They were competent to decide an
issue selected by the higher classes, but they were incompetent to
do more.

The grave question now is, How far will this peculiar old system
continue and how far will it be altered? I am afraid I must put
aside at once the idea that it will be altered entirely and altered
for the better. I cannot expect that the new class of voters will be
at all more able to form sound opinions on complex questions than
the old voters. There was indeed an idea--a very prevalent idea when
the first edition of this book was published--that there then was an
unrepresented class of skilled artisans who could form superior
opinions on national matters, and ought to have the means of
expressing them. We used to frame elaborate schemes to give them
such means. But the Reform Act of 1867 did not stop at skilled
labour; it enfranchised unskilled labour too. And no one will
contend that the ordinary working man who has no special skill, and