Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
Mr Mill concludes his essay, by answering an objection often made to the
project of universal suffrage--that the people do not understand their
own interests. We shall not go through his arguments on this subject,
because, till he has proved that it is for the interest of the people
to respect property, he only makes matters worse by proving that they
understand their interests. But we cannot refrain from treating our
readers with a delicious bonne bouche of wisdom, which he has kept for
the last moment.
"The opinions of that class of the people who are below the middle rank
are formed, and their minds are directed, by that intelligent, that
virtuous rank, who come the most immediately in contact with them, who
are in the constant habit of intimate communication with them, to whom
they fly for advice and assistance in all their numerous difficulties,
upon whom they feel an immediate and daily dependence in health and in
sickness, in infancy and in old age, to whom their children look up as
models for their imitation, whose opinions they hear daily repeated, and
account it their honour to adopt. There can be no doubt that the middle
rank, which gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself their
most distinguished ornaments, and is the chief source of all that has
exalted and refined human nature, is that portion of the community, of
which, if the basis of representation were ever so far extended, the
opinion would ultimately decide. Of the people beneath them, a vast
majority would be sure to be guided by their advice and example."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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