e.

But she was soon condemned to a disappointment proportioned to her
delight. Though Godolphin had hitherto taken no interest in party
politics, his prejudices, his feelings, his habits of mind, were all the
reverse of democratic. When he once began to examine the bearings of the
momentous question that agitated England, he was not slow in coming to
conclusions which threatened to produce a permanent disagreement between
Constance and himself.

"You wish me to enter Parliament, my dear Constance," said he, with
his quiet smile; "it would be an experiment dangerous to the union
re-established between us. I should vote against your Bill."

"You!" exclaimed Constance, with warmth; "is it possible that you can
sympathise with the fears of a selfish oligarchy--with the cause of the
merchants and traffickers of the plainest right of a free people--the
right to select their representatives?"

"My dear Constance," returned Godolphin, "my whole theory of Government
is aristocratic. The right of the people to choose representatives!--you
may as well say the right of the people to choose kings, or magistrates,
and judges--or clergymen and archbishops! The people have, it is true,
the abstract and original right to choose all these, and every year to
chop and change them as they please, but the people, very properly,
in all states, mortgage their elementary rights for one catholic and
practical right--the right to be well governed. It may be no more to
the advantage of the state that the People (that is, the majority, the
populace) should elect uncontrolled all the members of the House of
Commons--than that they should elect all the pastors of their religion.
The sole thing we have to consider is, will they be better governed?"

"Unquestionably," said Constance.

"Unquestionably!--Well, I question it. I foresee a more even balance of
parties--nothing else. When parties are evenly balanced states tremble.
In good government there should be somewhere sufficient power to carry
on, not unexamined, but at least with vigour, the different operations
of government itself. In free countries, therefore, one party ought to
preponderate sufficiently over the other. If it do not--all the state
measures are crippled, delayed, distorted, and the state languishes
while the doctors dispute as to the medicines to be applied to it. You
will find by your Bill, not that the Tories are destroyed, but that the
Whigs and the Radicals are strength