The Ancien Regime | Page 6

exist. In each succeeding century it is
applied to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale" (as the
"bagman" of Pickwick has become, and has deserved to become, the
"commercial gentleman" of our day). "At length it travelled with the
English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen
indiscriminately. Its history is that of democracy itself." . . .
"If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the
aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not
especially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, because its
outline was indistinct, and its limit unknown: not so much because any
man might be admitted into it, as because it was impossible to say with
certainty when he took rank there: so that all who approached it might
look on themselves as belonging to it; might take part in its rule, and
derive either lustre or profit from its influence."
Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever their
special political party, are conservative in the best sense of that word.
For there are not three, but only two, classes in England; namely, rich
and poor: those who live by capital (from the wealthiest landlord to the
smallest village shopkeeper); and those who live by hand-labour.
Whether the division between those two classes is increasing or not, is
a very serious question. Continued legislation in favour of the

hand-labourer, and a beneficence towards him, when in need, such as
no other nation on earth has ever shown, have done much to abolish the
moral division. But the social division has surely been increased during
the last half century, by the inevitable tendency, both in commerce and
agriculture, to employ one large capital, where several small ones
would have been employed a century ago. The large manufactory, the
large shop, the large 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 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