These criticisms on the conduct of constituencies do not necessarily commit us to the assertion that _none_ belonging to the official and aristocratic classes ought to be chosen. Though it would be safer to carry out, in these important {299} cases, the general principle which, as above shown, Parliament has itself recognized and enforced in unimportant cases; yet we are not prepared to say that occasional exceptions might not be made, on good cause being shown. All we aim to show is the gross impolicy of selecting so large a proportion of representatives from classes having interests different from those of the general public. That in addition to more than a third taken from the dominant class, who already occupy one division of the Legislature, the House of Commons should contain nearly another third taken from the naval, military, and legal classes, whose policy, like that of the dominant class, is to maintain things as they are; we consider a decisive proof of electoral misjudgment. That out of the 654 members, of which the People’s House now consists, there should be but 250 who, as considered from a class point of view, are eligible, or tolerably eligible (for we include a considerable number who are more or less objectionable), is significant of anything but popular good sense. That into an assembly established to protect their interests, the commonalty of England should have sent one-third whose interests are the same as their own, and two-thirds whose interests are at variance with their own, proves a scarcely credible lack of wisdom; and seems an awkward fact for the representative theory. If the intelligence of the mass is thus not sufficient even to choose out men who by position and occupation are fit representatives, still less is it sufficient to choose out men who are the fittest in character and capacity. To see who will be liable to the bias of private advantage is a very easy thing; to see who is wisest is a very difficult thing; and those who do not succeed in the first must necessarily fail in the last. The higher the wisdom the more incomprehensible does it become by ignorance. It is a manifest fact that the popular man or writer, is always one who is but little in advance of the mass, and consequently {300} understandable by them: never the man who is far in advance of them and out of their sight. Appreciation of another implies some community of thought. “Only the man of worth can recognize worth in men. . . . . . The worthiest, if he appealed to universal suffrage, would have but a poor chance. . . . . . Alas! Jesus Christ, asking the Jews what _he_ deserved—was not the answer, Death on the gallows!” And though men do not now-a-days stone the prophet, they, at any rate, ignore him. As Mr. Carlyle says in his vehement way―