The English Constitution | Page 5

all others older, brings in many new.
The transition is so gradual that we hardly perceive it. The board of
directors of the political company has a few slight changes every year,
and therefore the shareholders are conscious of no abrupt change. But
sometimes there IS an abrupt change. It occasionally happens that
several ruling directors who are about the same age live on for many
years, manage the company all through those years, and then go off the
scene almost together. In that case the affairs of the company are apt to
alter much, for good or for evil; sometimes it becomes more successful,
sometimes it is ruined, but it hardly ever stays as it was. Something like
this happened before 1865. All through the period between 1832 and
1865, the pre- '32 statesmen--if I may so call them--Lord Derby, Lord
Russell, Lord Palmerston, retained great power. Lord Palmerston to the
last retained great prohibitive power. Though in some ways always
young, he had not a particle of sympathy with the younger generation;
he brought forward no young men; he obstructed all that young men
wished. In consequence, at his death a new generation all at once

started into life; the pre-'32 all at once died out. Most of the new
politicians were men who might well have been Lord Palmerston's
grandchildren. He came into Parliament in 1806, they entered it after
1856. Such an enormous change in the age of the workers necessarily
caused a great change in the kind of work attempted and the way in
which it was done. What we call the "spirit" of politics is more surely
changed by a change of generation in the men than by any other change
whatever. Even if there had been no Reform Act, this single cause
would have effected grave alterations.
The mere settlement of the Reform question made a great change too. If
it could have been settled by any other change, or even without any
change, the instant effect of the settlement would still have been
immense. New questions would have appeared at once. A political
country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old
trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them; the seeds
were waiting in the ground, and they began to grow as soon as the
withdrawal of the old ones brought in light and air. These new
questions of themselves would have made a new atmosphere, new
parties, new debates.
Of course I am not arguing that so important an innovation as the
Reform Act of 1867 will not have very great effects. It must, in all
likelihood, have many great ones. I am only saying that as yet we do
not know what those effects are; that the great evident change since
1865 is certainly not strictly due to it; probably is not even in a
principal measure due to it; that we have still to conjecture what it will
cause and what it will not cause.
The principal question arises most naturally from a main doctrine of
these essays. I have said that Cabinet government is possible in
England because England was a deferential country. I meant that the
nominal constituency was not the real constituency; that the mass of the
"ten-pound" house-holders did not really form their own opinions, and
did not exact of their representatives an obedience to those opinions;
that they were in fact guided in their judgment by the better educated
classes; that they preferred representatives from those classes, and gave
those representatives much licence. If a hundred small shopkeepers had
by miracle been added to any of the '32 Parliaments, they would have
felt outcasts there. Nothing could be more unlike those Parliaments

than the average mass of the constituency from which they were
chosen.
I do not of course mean that the ten-pound householders were great
admirers of intellect or good judges of refinement. We all know that,
for the most part, they were not so at all; very few Englishmen are.
They were not influenced by ideas, but by facts; not by things
impalpable, but by things palpable. Not to put too fine a point upon it,
they were influenced by rank and wealth. No doubt the better sort of
them believed that those who were superior to them in these
indisputable respects were superior also in the more intangible qualities
of sense and knowledge. But the mass of the old electors did not
analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to represent
them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a lord,
they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors was,
Which of two rich people will you choose? And each of those rich