who is only rated because he has a house, can judge much of
intellectual matters. The messenger in an office is not more
intelligent than the clerks, not better educated, but worse; and yet
the messenger is probably a very superior specimen of the newly
enfranchised classes. The average can only earn very scanty wages by
coarse labour. They have no time to improve themselves, for they are
labouring the whole day through; and their early education was so
small that in most cases it is dubious whether even if they had much
time, they could use it to good purpose. We have not enfranchised a
class less needing to be guided by their betters than the old class;
on the contrary, the new class need it more than the old. The real
question is, Will they submit to it, will they defer in the same way
to wealth and rank, and to the higher qualities of which these are
the rough symbols and the common accompaniments?

There is a peculiar difficulty in answering this question.
Generally, the debates upon the passing of an Act contain much
valuable instruction as to what may be expected of it. But the
debates on the Reform Act of 1867 hardly tell anything. They are
taken up with technicalities as to the ratepayers and the compound
householder. Nobody in the country knew what was being done. I
happened at the time to visit a purely agricultural and Conservative
county, and I asked the local Tories, "Do you understand this Reform
Bill? Do you know that your Conservative Government has brought in a
Bill far more Radical than any former Bill, and that it is very
likely to be passed?" The answer I got was, "What stuff you talk!
How can it be a Radical Reform Bill? Why, BRIGHT opposes it!" There
was no answering that in a way which a "common jury" could
understand. The Bill was supported by the Times and opposed by Mr.
Bright; and therefore the mass of the Conservatives and of common