Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/140

 1832 vastly increases the number of electors who are subjected to moral or mental degradation, or both, and at the same time, with a few exceptions, fills the representative assembly with an inferior class of men,—men who have not been compelled to pass through the tests which, in the former period, were generally effectual barriers in the way of those who had nothing to recommend them but the command of ready money or audacity. Extending the suffrage under the present system, extends the demoralising influences, as it increases the necessity for a skilful organisation. The price of a vote, or the inducement to vote, may become very small; it may be no more than suffices for a day's debauch; but the organisation must then be more perfect, as more complicated management is necessary in the government of a laige manufactory, than in the conduct of a single workshop. This may be confidently predicted,—that if our electoral bodies are to be all concluded by the votes of their majorities, and if the ballot is to be introduced, whereby the profit of the managers and club-leaders can be made dependent on their success, all means of punishing or detecting bribery being abandoned,—wealth and luxury increasing, and the power and influence of the House of Commons also at the same time increasing,—we have not yet sounded anything approaching to that depth of corruption, and consequent degradation, which we shall surely reach.

The reformers of 1832 cannot be supposed to have been ignorant of the disposition of the mass of mankind, a disposition amounting to a law of nature, to follow where it is led, whether the way be good or evil. It is the few who will always conduct the many. "An immense majority of men must always remain in a middle state, neither very foolish nor very able, neither very virtuous nor very vicious, but slumbering on in a peaceful and decent mediocrity, adopting without much difficulty the current opinions of the day, making no inquiry, exciting no scandal, causing no wonder,