process of change going on in Great Britain, where the top of society
had all the "blood," but the circulation is growing larger and larger,
and a change is gradually taking place in their institutions. The old
nobility of Great Britain is the lordliest of aristocracies existing in
the world. Happily, on the whole, a very noble class of men occupy the
high positions: but the spirit of suffrage, this angel of God that so
many hate, is coming in on them; and when every man in Great Britain can
vote, no matter whether he is poor or rich, whether he has knowledge or
no knowledge, there must be a very great change. Before the great day of
the Lord shall come, the valleys are to go up and the mountains are to
come down; and the mountains have started already in Great Britain and
must come down. There may be an aristocracy in any nation,--that is to
say, there may be "best men"; there ought to be an aristocracy in every
community,--that is, an aristocracy of men who speak the truth, who are
just, who are intelligent: but that aristocracy will be like a wave of
the sea; it has to be reconstituted in every generation, and the men who
are the best in the State become the aristocracy of that State. But
where rank is hereditary, if political suffrage becomes free and
universal, aristocracy cannot live. The spirit of the gospel is
democratic. The tendency of the gospel is leveling; leveling up, not
down. It is carrying the poor and the multitude onward and upward.

It is said that democracies have no great men, no heroic men. Why is it
so? When you raise the average of intelligence and power in the
community it is very hard to be a great man. That is to say, when the
great mass of citizens are only ankle-high, when among the Lilliputians
a Brobdingnagian walks, he is a great man. But when the Lilliputians
grow until they get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a man as he
was by the whole length of his body. So, make the common people grow,
and there is nobody tall enough to be much higher.

* * * * *

The remarkable people of this world are useful in their way; but the
common people, after all, represent the nation, the age, and the
civilization. Go into any town or city: do not ask who lives in that
splendid house; do not say, This is a fine town, here are streets of
houses with gardens and yards, and everything that is beautiful the
whole way through. Go into the lanes, go into the back streets,