A Resemblance between France and England.
Mr. Gladstone.
Effects of a Contest of Classes.
The Irish Question a Class Question.
Powerful Social Opposition to Mr. Gladstone.
French Upper Classes overborne by Numbers.
The “Classes” deny the Existence of “Liberty” in France.
A resemblance between France and England is much more likely to be brought about in another way. Considerable numbers of people in the English upper classes are already feeling a hatred for Mr. Gladstone comparable in intensity to that which their French equals had for Gambetta. Mr. Gladstone himself gave the signal for combat by opposing “the masses” to “the classes” in words that will be long remembered. Mr. Morley said of the House of Lords that it must be “either mended or ended,” and that expression also is one not likely to be forgotten. Now if we suppose the case, not absolutely impossible, of these two democratic English leaders, at the head of a strong majority in the House of Commons, legislating in the sense indicated broadly and generally by the expressions just quoted, would the English “classes” have a heartfelt respect for the new laws? Judging by present signs of the times, it seems by no means unlikely that the sentiments of a defeated English upper-class minority would resemble those of the same defeated class in France. A contest of classes is a bitter contest, and England, as yet, has had but a slight experience of it. How much the Irish question has become, in England, a class question, may be seen by the frank acknowledgment of Mr. Gladstone that “the classes” are against him. Besides the majority in the House of Commons which is against Home rule (in the present year, 1888), Mr. Gladstone enumerates as its opponents “nine-tenths of the House of Lords; nine-tenths at least of what is termed the wealth of the country and of the vast forces of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its own estimation) of British intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous proportion of those who have received an academical education in England.”[27] If Mr. Gladstone hopes to overcome these great social powers, it can only be by the popular vote; and if he conquers by that means, then he will have established the state of things which exists in France, where the upper classes are overborne by numbers. It is easy to apply Mr. Gladstone’s own phrases, with a slight change, quite truly to the French. “Nine-tenths of the nobility, nine-tenths at least of what is called the wealth of the country, and of the vast forces of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its own estimation) of French intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous proportion of those who have received a clerical education”[28] are hostile to the Republic in France. And what in consequence? The consequence is that these classes entirely deny the existence of liberty in that country, although voting is perfectly free, and laws are always passed by a majority.
Minorities live on Hope.
English Liberty in the last Generation.