ort of result:
in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and
fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of
substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character,
and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests.
But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the
sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come
by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we
believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the
franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in
magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the
franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every
one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will
make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of
things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such
a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage,
and reach the right port, unless it is well-manned: the nature of the
winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the cordage, will
not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors.

You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of
joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not
be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care,
the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so
that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may
be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives
are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832, I was in an election riot,
which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must
always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about
chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the
people's side. Now the danger hanging over change is great, just in
proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large
number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and
brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and
may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say
that he sees no signs of any such danger now,