The significance of the victory of 1832 was immense. It broke up and reconstructed the whole of the machinery by which the old Toryism had managed the people, and it involved the first great revision of social values which had taken place in England. It was perhaps more important as a precedent for future changes than for what it was in itself. It was very far from implying the triumph of Revolutionary principles, though the spread of Revolutionary principles had alone made it possible. The Whigs themselves remained aristocratic and territorial, and they still dominated politics. The small group of commercial and manufacturing Members of Parliament was considerably increased by the enfranchisement of the new towns. But members continued for another generation to be chosen for the most part from the nobility and gentry, and only their constituents and the tone of their policy were changed. Very few members and only a small proportion of the newly enfranchised class had any belief in the equal worth of individuals in the State. The revision of values extended no farther than the middle class. Capital was appreciated in relation to land. Labour was still depreciated in relation to both. An end was put "to all the advantages which particular forms of property possess over other forms,"[205] but property as a whole was still supreme. The Reform Act was intended to enfranchise "the middle class of England, with the flower of the aristocracy at its head, and the flower of the working classes {169} bringing up its rear."[206] From their new elevation these looked down upon the mass of wage-earners as the old Tories had looked down upon them. "I would withhold from them," said Macaulay, "nothing which it might be for their good to possess.... If I would refuse to the working people that larger share of power which some of them have demanded, I would refuse it because I am convinced that, by giving it, I should only increase their distress. I admit that the end of government is their happiness. But that they may be governed for their happiness, they must not be governed according to the doctrines which they have learned from their illiterate, incapable, low-minded flatterers."[207] In just such language had Pitt referred to the working class and the Corresponding Society. Just as the old Tories had held that the landed gentry were the natural leaders of the nation, so the new Whigs paid the same tribute to the upper and middle classes combined. "The higher and middling orders are the natural representatives of the human race."[208] The disposing habit had come down a step. But it remained the disposing habit.