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on the promise of present good , but calmly calculates consequences and determines whether the total sum of happiness is likely to be increased or diminished by the proposed measure . But errors of this sort are not peculiar to the class I am
surveying . They are not unfrequent among those who think themselves so infinitely superior . The remedy for the evil is education , and it should be applied without delay . The people cannot be now kept in ignorance , and as they will learn something , it is desirable that they should he properly taught . And here I would invite the attention of the reader to a
reHection which has of late often occurred to me . By the Reform Bill the working classes are almost , if not entirely , excluded from the elective franchise . A line is thus drawn between them and the rest of the community . May this not lead them to think that their interests also are distinct from those of the
rest of the community ; that having different rights , they ought to have different objects ? Besides , all power has now passed into the hands of the middle class , and I much fear that there is less sympathy in that class with the wants and feelings of those below it than there is amongst the highest . I doubt whether the nobleman is not much more solicitous for the
welfare of the labourer than is the tradesman , perhaps from the predominance of that singular feature in our society which induces those who are striving to advance to spurn their immediate inferiors , that they may prove beyond question that they a re inferiors . It seems to me highly desirable , nay , necessary for the future peace and security of society , that a portion of the working class should be admitted to the enjoyment of the elective franchise under some well digested restrictions , were
it only to take from them the present invidious distinction , and make a safety valve through which excited feelings may escape . Besides , the middle class , if it finds it unnecessary for its own purposes to court the working class , ma )' be inclined to legislate too mucji for its own peculiar interests . This not altogether imaginary danger would bo avoided by creating such a body of electors among the labouring class as should compel its superiors not to forget that it has rights to preserve and wants to be satisfied .
Thus , from the surface to the centre of society , all is agitation Though there is not a trace of a storm , not so much as the cloud no bigger than a man ' s hand at present visible , yet there is a ground swell which we all feel , a rolling and a tossing , a waving to and fro , a restlessness , an uneasiness from the
highest to the lowest , which indicates the secret presence of some miffhtv but invisible nsjent . What means this coumiotion ? What does it portend ? May it not he the beginning of the threat ami mortal stnii ^ le between the oltl and the now euiueuts F > OP of power , between mind <> n tlir one part , and wealth an « J
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The Signs of the Times . g 25
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No . 112 . Q
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 225, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/33/
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