Inant during the Middle Age have been sinking downward, often to the
rank of mere day-labourers,
and carrying downward with them--sometimes in a very tragical and
pathetic fashion--somewhat of the dignity and the refinement which
they had learnt
from their ancestors. Thus has the English
nation (and as far as I can see, the Scotch
likewise) become more homogeneous than any nation of the Continent,
if we except France since the extermination
of the Frankish nobility. And for that very reason, as it seems to
me, it is more fitted than any other European nation for the exercise
of equal political rights; and not to be debarred of them by
arguments drawn from countries which have been governed--as England
has not been--by a caste. The civilisation, not of mere
book-learning, but of the heart; all that was once meant by
"manners"--good breeding, high feeling, respect for self and respect
for others--are just as common (as far as I have seen) among the
hand-workers of England and
Scotland, as among any other class; the only difference is, that
these qualities develop
more early in the richer classes,
owing to that severe discipline of our public schools,
which makes mere lads often fit to govern, because they have learnt
to obey: while they develop later--generally not till middle age--in
the classes who have not gone through in their youth that Spartan
training, and who indeed (from a mistaken conception of liberty)
would not endure it for a day. This and other social drawbacks which
are but too patent, retard the manhood of the working classes. That
it should be so, is a wrong. For if a citizen have one right above
all others to demand anything of his country, it is that he should be
educated; that whatever capabilities he may have in him, however
small, should have
their fair and full chance of development. But the cause of the wrong
is
not the existence of a caste, or a privileged class, or of anything
save the plain fact, that some men will be always able to pay more
for their children's education than others; and that those children
will, inevitably,
win in the struggle of life. Meanwhile, in this fact is to be found
the most weighty, i