lights of experience to throw
upon this part of the subject. The objection which I always hear there
from persons who wish to retain restrictions upon elections is this: 'If
you leave them to examination, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the other public
schools will carry _everything_.' I have a strong impression that the
aristocracy of this country are even superior in natural gifts, on the
average, to the mass: but it is plain that with their acquired
advantages, their _insensible education_, irrespective of book-learning,
they have an immense superiority. This applies in its degree to all
those who may be called gentlemen by birth and training; and it must be
remembered that an essential part of any such plan as is now under
discussion is the separation of _work_, wherever it can be made, into
mechanical and intellectual, a separation which will open to the highly
educated class a career, and give them a command over all the higher
parts of the civil service, which up to this time they have never
enjoyed....

I must admit that the aggregate means now possessed by government for
carrying on business in the House of Commons are not in excess of the
real need, and will not bear serious diminution. I remember being
alarmed as a young man when Lord Althorp said, or was said to have said,
that this country could no longer be governed by patronage. But while
sitting thirteen years for a borough with a humble constituency, and
spending near ten of them in opposition, I was struck by finding that
the loss or gain of access to government patronage was not traceable in
its effect upon the local political influences. I concluded from this
that it was not the intrinsic value of patronage (which is really none,
inasmuch as it does not, or ought not, to multiply the aggregate number
of places to be given, but only acts on the mode of giving them) that
was regarded, but simply that each party liked and claimed to be upon a
footing of equality with their neighbours. Just in the same way, it was
considered necessary that bandsmen, flagmen, and the rest, should be
paid four times the value of their services, without any intention of
bribery, but because it was the custom, and was done on the other
side--in places where this was thought essential, it has now utterly
vanished away, and yet the people vote and work for their cause as
zealously as they did before. May not this after all be found to be the
case in the House of Commons as well as i