the whole free States of the Union: in these countries there is no such thing as honest poverty, — physical comfort, such as the poor cannot imagine here, is there easily attainable by healthy industry; education is diffused much, and is fast spreading, - ignorant emigrants from the Old World often prize the intellectual advantages of which they are themselves destitute, and are annoyed at their inferiority in a place. where rudimentary culture is so common. The greatest difficulty of such new communities is commonly geographical: the population is mostly scattered; and where population is sparse, discussion is difficult. But in a country very large as we reckon in Europe, a people really intelligent, really educated, really comfortable, would soon form a good opinion. No one can doubt that the New England States, if they were a separate community, would have an education, a political capacity, and an intelligence such as the numerical majority of no people equally numerous has ever possessed in a state of this sort, where all the community is fit to choose a sufficient legislature, it is possible, it is almost easy, to create that legislature. If the New England States possessed a cabinet government as a separate nation, they would be as renowned in the world for political sagacity as they now are for diffused happiness.

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The structure of these communities is indeed based on the principle of equality, and it is impossible that any such community can wholly satisfy the severe requirements of a political theorist: in every old community its primitive and guiding assumption is at war with truth. By its theory all people are entitled to the same political power, and they can only be so entitled on the ground that in politics they are equally wise. But at the outset of an agricultural colony this postulate is as near the truth as politics want: there are in such communities no large properties, no great capitals, no refined classes, -every one is comfortable and homely, and no one is at all more; equality is

not artificially established in a new colony, it establishes itself. There is a story that among the first settlers in Western Australia, some who were rich took out laborers at their own expense, and also carriages to ride in; but soon they had to try if they could live in the carriages. Before the masters' houses were built, the laborers had gone off; they were building houses and cultivating land for themselves, and the masters were left to sit in their carriages. Whether this exact thing happened I do not know, but this sort of thing has happened a thousand times there have been a whole series of attempts to transplant to the colonies a graduated English society, but they have always failed at the first step. The rude classes at the bottom felt that they were equal to or better than the delicate classes at the top; they shifted for themselves, and left the "gentlefolks" to shift for themselves: the base of the elaborate pyramid spread abroad, and the apex tumbled in and perished. In the early ages of an agricultural colony, whether you have political democracy or not, social democracy you must have; for nature makes it, and not you. But in time, wealth grows and inequality begins: A and his children are industrious, and prosper; B and his children are idle, and fail. If manufactures on a considerable scale are established,-and most young communities strive even by Protection to establish them,-the tendency to inequality is intensified: the capitalist becomes a unit with much, and his laborers a crowd with little. After generations of education, too, there arise varieties of culture: there will be an upper thousand or ten thousand of highly cultivated people in the midst of a great nation of moderately educated people. In theory it is desirable that this highest class of wealth and leisure should have an influence far out of proportion to its mere number; a perfect constitution would find for it a delicate expedient to make its fine thought tell upon the surrounding cruder thought: but as the world goes,

when the whole of the population is as instructed and as intelligent as in the case I am supposing, we need not care much about this. Great communities have scarcely ever-never save for transient momentsbeen ruled by their highest thought; and if we can get them ruled by a decent capable thought, we may be well enough contented with our work, we have done more than could be expected, though not all which could be desired. At any rate, an isocratic polity-a polity where every one votes, and where every one votes alike-is, in a community of sound education and diffused intelligence, a conceivable case of cabinet government: it satisfies the essential condition, there is a people able to elect a parliament able to choose.

But suppose the mass of the people are not able to elect, and this is the case with the numerical majority of all but the rarest nations,-how is a cabinet government to be then possible? It is only possible in what I may venture to call deferential nations. It has been thought strange, but there are nations in which the numerous unwiser part wishes to be ruled by the less numerous wiser part: the numerical majority-whether by custom or by choice is immaterial -is ready, is eager to delegate its power of choosing its ruler to a certain select minority; it abdicates in favor of its élite, and consents to obey whoever that élite may confide in; it acknowledges as its secondary electors as the choosers of its government-an educated minority, at once competent and unresisted; it has a kind of loyalty to some superior persons who are fit to choose a good government, and whom no other class opposes. A nation in such a happy state as this has obvious advantages for constructing a cabinet government: it has the best people to elect a legislature, and therefore it may fairly be expected to choose a good legislature,—a legislature competent to select a good administration.

England is the type of deferential countries; and

the manner in which it is so, and has become so, is extremely curious. The middle classes-the ordinary majority of educated men-are in the present day the despotic power in England. "Public opinion," nowadays, "is the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus:" it is not the opinion of the aristocratical classes as such, or of the most educated or refined classes as such; it is simply the opinion of the ordinary mass of educated but still commonplace mankind. If you look at the mass of the constituencies, you will see that they are not very interesting people; and perhaps if you look behind the scenes and see the people who manipulate and work the constituencies, you will find that these are yet more uninteresting. The English Constitution in its palpable form is this, the mass of the people yield obedience to a select few; and when you see this select few, you perceive that though not of the lowest class, nor of an unrespectable class, they are yet of a heavy sensible class,-the last people in the world to whom, if they were drawn up in a row, an immense nation would ever give an exclusive preference.

In fact, the mass of the English people yield a deference rather to something else than to their rulers: they defer to what we may call the theatrical show of society. A certain state passes before them, — a certain pomp of great men, a certain spectacle of beautiful women; a wonderful scene of wealth and enjoyment is displayed, and they are coerced by it. Their imagination is bowed down: they feel they are not equal to the life which is revealed to them. Courts and aristocracies have the great quality which rules the multitude, though philosophers can see nothing in it, visibility. Courtiers can do what others. cannot a common man may as well try to rival the actors on the stage in their acting, as the aristocracy in their acting. The higher world, as it looks from without, is a stage on which the actors walk their parts much better than the spectators can. This play

is played in every district: every rustic feels that his house is not like my lord's house, his life like my lord's life, his wife like my lady. The climax of the play is the Queen: nobody supposes that their house is like the court, their life like her life, her orders like their orders. There is in England a certain charmed spectacle which imposes on the many, and guides their fancies as it will. As a rustic on coming to London finds himself in presence of a great show and vast exhibition of inconceivable mechanical things, so by the structure of our society he finds himself face to face with a great exhibition of political things which he could not have imagined, which he could not make, to which he feels in himself scarcely anything analogous.

Philosophers may deride this superstition, but its results are inestimable: by the spectacle of this august society, countless ignorant men and women are induced to obey the few nominal electors,—the £10 borough renters and the £50 county renters, — who have nothing imposing about them, nothing which would attract the eye or fascinate the fancy. What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. and the greatest of these results is this wonderful spectacle of society, which is ever new and yet ever the same; in which accidents pass and essence remains; in which one generation dies and another succeeds, as if they were birds in a cage or animals in a menagerie; of which it seems almost more than a metaphor to treat the parts as limbs of a perpetual living thing, so silently do they seem to change, so wonderfully and so perfectly does the conspicuous life of the new year take the place of the conspicuous life of last year. The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession,-it is by them the mob are influenced, it is they whom the spectators cheer; the real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages,-no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are