A vote given in
opposition to those influences was therefore, in general, an honest, a
public-spirited vote; but in any case, and by whatever motive
dictated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was a vote
against the monster evil, the over-ruling influence of oligarchy.
Could the voter at that time have been enabled, with safety to
himself, to exercise his privilege freely, even though neither
honestly nor intelligently, it would have been a great gain to reform;
for it would have broken the yoke of the then ruling power in the
country- the power which had created and which maintained all that
was bad in the institutions and the administration of the State- the
power of landlords and boroughmongers.
"The ballot was not adopted; but the progress of circumstances has
done and is doing more and more, in this respect, the work of the
ballot. Both the political and the social state of the country, as
they affect this question, have greatly changed, and are changing
every day. The higher classes are not now masters of the country. A
person must be blind to all the signs of the times who could think
that the middle classes are as subservient to the higher, or the
working classes as dependent on the higher and middle, as they were
a quarter of a century ago. The events of that quarter of a century
have not only taught each class to know its own collective strength,
but have put the individuals of a lower class in a condition to show a
much bolder front to those of a higher.
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