(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 into the condition of
mere rich men, exciting, by their luxury and laziness, nothing but envy
and contempt.

Meanwhile, behind all classes and social forces--I had almost said, above
them all--stands a fourth estate, which will, ultimately, decide the form
which English society is to take: a Press as different from the literary
class of the Ancien Regime as is everything else English; and different
in this--that it is free.

The French Revolution, like every revolution (it seems to me) which has
convulsed the nations of Europe for the last eighty years, was caused
immediately--whatever may have been its more remote causes--by the
suppression of thought; or, at least, by a sense of wrong among those who
thought. A country where every man, be he fool or wise, is free to speak
that which is in him, can never suffer a revolution. The folly blows
itself off like steam, in harmless noise; the wisdom becomes part of the
general intellectual stock of the nation, and prepares men for gradual,
and therefore for harmless, change.

As long as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against sudden and
capricious folly, either from above or from below. As long as the press
is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil of persistent and
obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable shapes of tradition
and authority. For under a free press, a nation must ultimately be
guided not by a caste, not by a class, not by mere wealth, not by the
passions of a mob: but by mind; by the net result of all the common-sense
of its members; and in the present default of genius, which is un-common
sense, common-sense seems to be the only, if not the b