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 the millennium.It will merely make a large number of Englishmen contented and loyal, instead of discontented and disloyal.It may make, too, the educated and wealthy classes wiser by awakening a wholesome fear--perhaps, it may be, by awakening a chivalrous emulation.It may put the younger men of the present aristocracy upon their mettle, and stir them up to prove that they are not in the same effete condition as was the French noblesse in 1789.It may lead them to take the warnings which have been addressed to them, for the last thirty years, by their truest friends--often by kinsmen of their own.It may lead them to ask themselves why, in a world which is governed by a just God, such great power as is palpably theirs at present is entrusted to them, save that they may do more work, and not less, than other men, under the penalties pronounced against those to whom much is given, and of whom much is required.It may lead them to discover that they are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the tree, and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the "competition of species" works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weeds upon the waste; where "he that is not hammer, is sure to be anvil;" and he who will not work, neither shall he eat.It may lead them to devote that energy (in which they surpass so far the continental aristocracies) to something better than outdoor amusements or indoor dilettantisms.There are those among them who, like one section of the old French noblesse, content themselves with mere complaints of "the revolutionary tendencies of the age." Let them beware in time; for when the many are on the march, the few who stand still are certain to be walked over.There are those among them who, like another section of the French noblesse, are ready, more generously than wisely, to throw away their own social and political advantages, and play (for it will never be really more than playing) at democracy.Let them, too, beware.The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for they were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be wise in trying to fell trees.Let them accept their own position, not in conceit and arrogance, but in fear and trembling; and see if they cannot play the man therein, and save their own class; and with it, much which it has needed many centuries to accumulate and to organise, and without which no nation has yet existed for a single century.They are no more like the old French noblesse, than are the commercial class like the old French bourgeoisie, or the labouring like the old French peasantry.Let them prove that fact by their deeds during the next generation; or sink