He was good up to a certain point, beyond which he could not go. He could threaten, ‘If you do this, and this, you shall be trounced.’ Thus the way of transgressors was made visibly hard for them. But he could not educate--he taught nothing except obedience to the law; he had neither religion nor morals; therefore, though he kept the people in order, he did not advance them. On the other hand, under his rule they were left entirely to themselves, and so they grew worse and worse, more thirsty of gin, more brutal, more ignorant. So that, in the long run, I suppose there was not under the light of the sun a more depraved and degraded race than that which peopled the lowest levels of our great towns. There is always in every great town a big lump of lawlessness, idleness, and hostility to order. The danger, a hundred years ago, was that this lump was getting every day bigger, and threatening to include the whole of the working class. Remember that as yet the government of this realm was wholly in the hands of the wealthier sort. Only those who had what was humorously called a stake in the country were allowed to share in ruling it. Those who brought to the service of their native land only their hands and their lives, their courage, their patience, skill, endurance, and obedience, were supposed to have no stake in the country. The workers, who contribute the whole that makes the prosperity of the country, were then excluded from any share in managing it. It seems to me that the first improvement of the People dates from their perception of the fact that all have a right to help in managing their own affairs; I think one might prove that the ideas of the French Revolution, when they were once grasped, arrested the downward course of the People--the first step to dignity and self-respect was to understand that they might become free men, and not remain like unto slaves who are ordered and have to obey. Then they began to struggle for their rights, and in the struggle learned a thousand lessons which have stood them in good stead. They learned to combine, to act together, to form committees and councils; they learned the art of oratory, and the arts of persuasion by speech and pen; they learned the power of knowledge--in a word, the long struggle whose first great victory was the Reform Act of 1832 taught the People the art of self-government.