n laws we have given up political agitation; we felt we might place
confidence in parliament; instead of political action, we tried to spend
our evenings in the improvement of our minds." This convinced him that it
was not either want of faith in parliament, or indifference to a vote,
that explained the absence of agitation.

II

The outcome of this stream of new perceptions and new feeling in his mind
was a declaration that suddenly electrified the political world. A
Yorkshire liberal one afternoon (May 11, 1864) brought in a bill for
lowering the franchise, and Mr. Gladstone spoke for the government. He
dwelt upon the facts, historic and political. The parliamentary history of
reform for the thirteen years, since Locke King's motion in 1851 upset a
government, had been most unsatisfactory, and to set aside all the solemn
and formal declarations from 1851 down to the abortive Reform bill of 1860
would be a scandal. Then, was not the state of the actual case something
of a scandal, with less than one-tenth of the constituencies composed of
working men, and with less than one-fiftieth of the working men in
possession of the franchise? How could you defend a system that let in the
lower stratum of the middle class and shut out the upper stratum of the
working class? In face of such dispositions as the workmen manifested
towards law, parliament, and government, was it right that the present
system of almost entire exclusion should prevail? Then came the sentence
that, in that stagnant or floundering hour of parliamentary opinion,
marked a crisis. "I call upon the adversary to show cause, and _I venture
to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some
consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger, is morally
entitled to come within the pale of the constitution_. Of course, in
giving utterance to such a proposition, I do not recede from the protest I
have previously made against sudden, or violent, or excessive, or
intoxicating change."

He concluded in words that covered much ground, though when closely
scrutinised they left large loopholes. "It is well," he said, "that we
should be suitably provided with armies and fleets and fortifications; it
is well, too, that all these should rest upon and be sustained, as they
ought to be, by a sound system of finance, and out of a revenue not wasted
by a careless parliament or by a profligate administration. But that which
is better and more weig