e aristocratic classes.
These words may indicate the drift of the essay:

But I come back to this: that, in our old society there are old
institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited
advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the
wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our
commerce and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such
as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought
and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the
irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water
distributed or it will bear no crop; these are the old channels, the
old banks and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new
and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been
gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter down a pump
only because a better might be made, when you have no machinery ready
for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by
it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and
our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with
the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if
everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of
life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by
turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean
is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to
perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility
to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a
state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless
conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability
and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition
would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the
most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those
around them: and for one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go
about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast
sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be
pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now changes can only be
good in proportion as they help to bring about this s