The larger towns are doubtless different,—at least, much more mixed. There are in them a considerable, though uncertain number of really intellectual artizans; and these are very well fit to form a political opinion, and far too well off to care much about a bribe. What the number of these thoughtful artizans is we cannot indeed tell. We can guess roughly at the number of the whole artizan class; but this includes many very different from those we speak of. There are many who never think of politics, who could not think of them, who care only for such pleasures as they can get. But what the proportion is between the good artizan and the inferior artizan—the artizan who is no better than other people—we have no means of even investigating. There are no ‘mental and moral statistics’ here to help us; and I do not claim to be able from personal knowledge to know the true ratio, while such estimates as I have been able to elicit from others differ immensely. We can only allege that as both classes largely exist, in a political estimate both must be carefully allowed for.

But the vote of the inferior working man is simply the vote of the ‘wire-puller.’ I am not competent to explain in detail how the inferior species of large constituencies are managed now, but in general everybody knows that money will buy them, and that certain persons will contract for them. They are mapped out, I believe, by the electioneering agents, and each contractor for a district, or a set of votes, has a subcontractor for bits of the district and parts of the set. This fate will happen to all but the most rigid and political artizans, as it happens to all except the most strict and most intellectual of the lower middle classes. Here again, is the rule of money, just as in the small boroughs.

The result of our investigations, therefore, is this. So far from an ultra-democratic suffrage giving us a more homogeneous and decided House of Commons, it would give us a less homogeneous and a more timid House. There would be first, a new element,—the representative of the intellectual artizan, but he would be in a vast minority, and only a new item in a motley crowd; next, there would be the rich member for the corrupt big borough; next, the rich member for the corrupt small borough; and, next, the county member, much as he is now, but perhaps intensified and more even still of a class member. Now wealth is the most timid of all things; and the kind of people most apt to purchase seats are the most politically ignorant of people. They are newly-made rich men, who by hard labour and great skill in business have made large fortunes; or again, they are new men, who wish to be thought rich, and are deeply engaged in traffic and companies. These people have never been much used to give much attention to politics; they have no leisure, and perhaps no inclination either, to begin to give real attention to them in middle age; they float with the opinion of the day; they are guided by what was in the newspapers last week, and change to what may be there next week. Such men are timid upon a double score: they fear as rich men, that their wealth may be endangered; and they fear as ignorant men, that they may be entrapped into something they do not comprehend. They will bring no vigour. The landlord will bring none either; and the House will be more heterogeneous and probably be more vacillating and timid than now.

This argument, I shall be told, assumes that the present constitution will be retained though the suffrage is lowered, and that the point of the demonstration depends upon that retention. But I answer by denial. I say that any readjustment of boundaries would leave the matter much the same. There are not enough pure and rigid citizens, under a very low suffrage, to elect above a fraction of the House, pick the electoral places where you like; but territorial and aristocratic influence has its indefeasible seats, and money its power everywhere. The nature of our constitution is not predominantly in fault, but the nature of our people.

As far as I can see, the theory of the augmented administrative power of a more democratic government rests not upon an accurate argument, but upon a kind of faith. Sanguine men assume that the English, somehow or other, ought to have the best possible government, and when they find that Parliament is not so decided as they like, they are angry, and clutch at the readiest means of altering Parliament. But it is of little use to alter the suffrage unless we alter ourselves. A free government cannot be wiser than a free nation; it is but their fruit and outcome, and it must be as they are. The real source of the weakness in our policy is in ourselves—in our ignorance. Let any one take to pieces the brains of any twenty persons he knows well, and think how little accurate knowledge, how little defined opinion, how