The essential differences between Liberalism and Toryism are revealed in their disputes about the larger political topics. The franchise never fails to draw clear expressions of character from both sides. To the Liberal, the right of a man to control his own government is only one of the many rights which go to make up his right to control his own life. His freedom of life cannot be complete if, without his consent, his earnings may be diminished by taxation, his business ruined by a commercial treaty, the education of his children prescribed by legislation, and his whole fortune impaired by a declaration of war. There can be no real freedom of growth without control of government. But the argument for enfranchisement is based on more than the {26} direct consequences of it. That the man who is taxed against his will enjoys only an imperfect freedom is obvious. What is not so readily perceived is that he is indirectly affected in a much more serious way. It is axiomatic that a governing class will, sooner or later, abuse its absolute power. Landowners use the tariff to increase their rents, and so impose burdens upon the poor. The middle class prohibits the combination of workmen in trade disputes, or resists the regulation of factories by law. Working-men exclude working-women from trades which they wish to preserve for their own sex. Men erect a system of marriage law which places the wife in the power of the husband. All this is written in history, and cannot be disputed. But the unseen consequences of disfranchisement are not so often realized. There is constant action and reaction between political institutions and social estimates. If disfranchisement springs from depreciation, it also encourages it. To confine the control of government to one class is to appreciate that class at the expense of others, and to encourage its members to abuse their disfranchised associates whenever they are brought into contact with them. So long as the big business of politics is reserved for them, so long are they compelled to believe that the monopoly is the reward of their superior worth. Their ego is exalted, and that of their subjects is depressed. Private insolence is the inevitable consequence of public privilege. Government by landlords means interference with the political and religious opinions of tenants. Government by Protestants means the exclusion of Catholics from offices of dignity and profit. Government by masters means bad conditions of labour and fettered powers of combination among workmen. Government by men means the exclusion of women from professions and the maintenance of a double standard of morality. It is not suggested here that disfranchisement does more than affect tendencies. The political thinker who values his reputation will always write in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of states. But disfranchisement at least tends to produce, if it does not actually produce, the consequences of social depreciation.