The rules of the Royal Institution forbid (and wisely)
religious or political controversy. It was therefore
impossible for me in these Lectures, to say much which
had to be said, in drawing a just and complete picture
of the Ancien Regime in France. The passages
inserted between brackets, which bear on religious
matters, were accordingly not spoken at the Royal
Institution.
But more. It was impossible for me in these
Lectures, to bring forward as fully as I could have
wished, the contrast between the continental nations
and England, whether now, or during the eighteenth
century. But that contrast cannot be too carefully
studied at the present moment. In proportion
as it is seen and understood, will the fear of revolution
(if such exists) die out among the wealthier classes;
and the wish for it (if such exists) among the poorer;
and a large extension of the suffrage will be looked
on as—what it actually is—a safe
and harmless concession to the wishes—and,
as I hold, to the just rights—of large portion
of the British nation.
There exists in Britain now, as far as I can see,
no one of those evils which brought about the French
Revolution. There is no widespread misery, and
therefore no widespread discontent, among the classes
who live by hand-labour. The legislation of
the last generation has been steadily in favour of
the poor, as against the rich; and it is even more
true now than it was in 1789, that—as Arthur
Young told the French mob which stopped his carriage—the
rich pay many taxes (over and above the poor-rates,
a direct tax on the capitalist in favour of the labourer)
more than are paid by the poor. “In England”
(says M. de Tocqueville of even the eighteenth century)
“the poor man enjoyed the privilege of exemption
from taxation; in France, the rich.” Equality
before the law is as well-nigh complete as it can
be, where some are rich and others poor; and the only
privileged class, it sometimes seems to me, is the
pauper, who has neither the responsibility of self-government,
nor the toil of self-support.
A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly,
angry with the present state of things, will always
exist in this world. But a majority of malcontents
we shall never have, as long as the workmen are allowed
to keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of
free speech, free public meeting, free combination
for all purposes which do not provoke a breach of
the peace. There may be (and probably are) to
be found in London and the large towns, some of those
revolutionary propagandists who have terrified and
tormented continental statesmen since the year 1815.
But they are far fewer in number than in 1848; far
fewer still (I believe) than in 1831; and their habits,
notions, temper, whole mental organisation, is so
utterly alien to that of the average Englishman, that
it is only the sense of wrong which can make him take
