to England south of the Trent, then
corresponded to a real preponderance in wealth and mind. How opposite
the present contrast is we all know. And the case gets worse every day.
The nature of modern trade is to give to those who have much and take
from those who have little. Manufacture goes where manufacture is,
because there and there alone it finds attendant and auxiliary
manufacture. Every railway takes trade from the little town to the big
town because it enables the customer to buy in the big town. Year by
year the North (as we may roughly call the new industrial world) gets
more important, and the South (as we may call the pleasant remnant of
old time) gets less important. It is a grave objection to our existing
Parliamentary constitution that it gives much power to regions of past
greatness, and refuses equal power to regions of present greatness.

I think (though it is not a popular notion) that by far the greater
part of the cry for Parliamentary reform is due to this inequality. The
great capitalists, Mr. Bright and his friends, believe they are sincere
in asking for more power for the working man, but, in fact, they very
naturally and very properly want more power for themselves. They cannot
endure--they ought not to endure--that a rich, able manufacturer should
be a less man than a small stupid squire. The notions of political
equality which Mr. Bright puts forward are as old as political
speculation, and have been refuted by the first efforts of that
speculation. But for all that they are likely to last as long as
political society, because they are based upon indelible principles in
human nature. Edmund Burke called the first East Indians, "Jacobins to
a man," because they did not feel their "present importance equal to
their real wealth". So long as there is an uneasy class, a class which
has not its just power, it will rashly clutch and blindly believe the
notion that all men should have the same power.

I do not consider the exclusion of the working classes from effectual
representation a defect in THIS aspect of our Parliamentary
representation. The working classes contribute almost nothing to our
corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of
influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament
with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also
in the thing represented.

Nor do I think the number of persons of aristocratic descent in
Parlia