continued to do so. It wasn't really parliamentary
reform that was wanted; it was better and more intelligent government.
And such government the then ruling class was capable of supplying, as
is shown by the series of measures passed in the thirties and forties,
the new Poor Law and the Public Health Acts and the rest. Even the
repeal of the Corn Laws shows at least how capable they were of
sacrificing their own interests to the nation; though otherwise I
consider that measure the greatest of their blunders. I don't profess
to be a political economist, and I am ready to take it from those whose
business it is to know that our wealth has been increased by Free
Trade. But no one has ever convinced me, though many people have
tried, that the increase of wealth ought to be the sole object of a
nation's policy. And it is surely as clear as day that the policy of
Free Trade has dislocated the whole structure of our society. It has
substituted a miserable city-proletariat for healthy labourers on the
soil; it has transferred the great bulk of wealth from the
country-gentleman to the traders; and in so doing it has more and more
transferred power from those who had the tradition of using it to those
who have no tradition at all except that of accumulation. The very
thing which I should have thought must be the main business of a
statesman--the determination of the proper relations of classes to one
another--we have handed over to the chances of competition. We have
abandoned the problem in despair, instead of attempting to solve it;
with the result, that our population--so it seems to me--is daily
degenerating before our eyes, in physique, in morals, in taste, in
everything that matters; while we console ourselves with the increasing
aggregate of our wealth. Free Trade, in my opinion, was the first
great betrayal by the governing class of the country and themselves,
and the second was the extension of the franchise. I do not say that I
would not have made any change at all in the parliamentary system that
had been handed down to us. But I would never have admitted, even
implicitly, that every man has a right to vote, still less that all
have an equal right. For society, say what we may, is not composed of
individuals but of classes; and by classes it ought to be represented.
I would have enfranchised peasants, artisans, merchants, manufacturers,
as such, taking as my unit the interest, not the individual, and
assign