peated his declaration of them,
feeling that he had incurred unpopularity enough, and probably feeling
also that the case was hopeless.

People who disliked his lugubrious forecasts used to call him a
Cassandra, perhaps forgetting that, besides the distinctive feature
of Cassandra's prophecies that nobody believed them, there was another
distinctive feature, viz. that they came true. Did Lowe's? It is often
profitable and sometimes amusing to turn back to the predictions
through which eminent men relieved their perturbed souls, and see how
far these superior minds were able to discern the tendencies, already
at work in their time, which were beginning to gain strength, and were
destined to determine the future. Whoever reads Lowe's speeches of
1865-67 may do worse than glance at the same time at a book,[44] long
since forgotten, which contains the efforts of a group of young
University Liberals to refute the arguments used by him and by Lord
Cairns, the strongest of his allies, in their opposition to schemes of
parliamentary reform.

To compare the optimism of these young writers and Lowe's pessimism
with what has actually come to pass is a not uninstructive task. True
it is that England has had only thirty-five years' experience of the
Reform Act of 1867, and only seventeen years' experience of that even
greater step towards pure democracy which was effected by the
Franchise and Redistribution Acts of 1884-85. We are still far from
knowing what sorts of Parliaments and policies the enlarged suffrage
will end by giving. But some at least of the mischiefs Lowe foretold
have not arrived. He expected first of all a rapid increase in
corruption and intimidation at parliamentary elections. The quality of
the House of Commons would decline, because money would rule, and
small boroughs would no longer open the path by which talent could
enter. Members would be either millionaires or demagogues, and they
would also become far more subservient to their constituents.
Universal suffrage would soon arrive, because no halting-place between
the L10 franchise[45] and universal suffrage could be found. Placed on
a democratic basis, the House of Commons would not be able to retain
its authority over the Executive. The House of Lords, the Established
Church, the judicial bench (in that dignity and that independence
which are essential to its usefulness), would be overthrown as England
passed into "the bare and level plain of democracy