Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/141

 just holding themselves on a level with their generation, and noiselessly conforming to the standard of morals and knowledge common to the age and country in which they live." Left to themselves they will willingly—every one according to the tendencies created by his moral or physical condition—adopt as their guide and model him whom they may happen to regard as the most distinguished or the most admirable. There is not the shadow of doubt that, other things being the same, the man of high rank or noble descent would be chosen by the vast majority; and, probably, the same grounds of pre-eminence would eclipse in their eyes many other virtues and qualities which they are less able to appreciate. This is not necessarily sycophancy. There is nothing to deprecate in the habit of yielding respect to a nobility which bears the stamp of the highest authority of the State in which we live—the recognised fountain of honour." It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem." Of this result we may at least be certain, that a leader will appear, and if he be not discovered in the palace, he will issue from some lower degree of life, and if no better be found, he will be taken even from the beer-shop. The reformers of 1832 might not unreasonably have hoped that in the future public action for the public good, the better influences would appear and assert their power; but it was not possible for the Reform Bill to set up other leaders in the place of those it dethroned. The oligarchical spirit was expelled from the temple dedicated to the use of a free people; but no sooner was it cleansed than it became the habitation of a legion of other spirits, more vile than those which were cast out. It behoves the Legislature, while