the people, have not they shed their blood
in battle, though they may have commanded fleets less often than your
lordship's relatives? And these mines and canals that you have excavated
and constructed, these woods you have planted, these waters you have
drained--had the people no hand in these creations? What share in these
great works had that faculty of Labour whose sacred claims we now urge,
but which for centuries have been passed over in contemptuous silence?
No, my lord, we call upon you to decide this question by the result.
The Aristocracy of England have had for three centuries the exercise
of power; for the last century and a half that exercise has been
uncontrolled; they form at this moment the most prosperous class that
the history of the world can furnish: as rich as the Roman senators,
with sources of convenience and enjoyment which modern science could
alone supply. All this is not denied. Your order stands before Europe
the most gorgeous of existing spectacles; though you have of late years
dexterously thrown some of the odium of your polity upon that middle
class which you despise, and who are despicable only because they
imitate you, your tenure of power is not in reality impaired. You govern
us still with absolute authority--and you govern the most miserable
people on the face of the globe."

"And is this a fair description of the people of England?" said Lord
Valentine. "A flash of rhetoric, I presume, that would place them lower
than the Portuguese or the Poles, the serfs of Russia or the Lazzaroni
of Naples."

"Infinitely lower," said the delegate, "for they are not only degraded,
but conscious of their degradation. They no longer believe in any
innate difference between the governing and the governed classes of this
country. They are sufficiently enlightened to feel they are victims.
Compared with the privileged classes of their own land, they are in
a lower state than any other population compared with its privileged
classes. All is relative, my lord, and believe me, the relations of the
working classes of England to its privileged orders are relations of
enmity, and therefore of peril."

"The people must have leaders," said Lord Valentine.

"And they have found them," said the delegate.

"When it comes to a push they will follow their nobility," said Lord
Valentine.

"Will their nobility lead them?" said the other delegate. "For my part
I do not pretend to be a philosopher, and if I saw