He came up to London from Carshalton on the morning of 10 April 1848 and “met Chartists all round Kennington.” Among my family relics I have a truncheon: there were 150,000 special constables then, and they stopped any Chartism. But the Charter itself seems harmless now: we have accepted five of its six points, and might very well accept the other one--annual parliaments. If we had general elections every year, they would soon cease to be such great events, and such great nuisances; and there might be greater continuity in our public policy. A moderate loss of seats would warn the Ministers, if they were taking a wrong course; and then they probably would alter course at once, instead of keeping on for several years, and then losing so many seats that they are superseded and their policy reversed. We badly need a word (say Pleistarchy) for government by majority. We call it Democracy, but use that word in quite another sense. The arguments for democracy are embodied in stock phrases, ‘the will of the people,’ ‘vox populi,’ and so on, all implying that the people or populus or dêmos is always going to be unanimous, just like a jury. It may be necessary that the will of fifty-one should thwart the will of forty-nine; but it cannot be justified by saying that the will of the people must prevail, as that means the will of the whole hundred, if it means anything at all. We should come nearer to democracy by stipulating for majorities of two-thirds or three-fourths, as in America; but we ought to have majorities of nine-tenths or nineteen-twentieths before we talk about democracy here. And we might talk less nonsense, if we had a word like Pleistarchy expressing what we really mean. Corruption was not confined to politics. A friend of my father’s writes to him from Torquay, 29 January 1845, about a younger brother who was causing him anxiety. “You perhaps are aware that I have endeavoured to obtain him a cadetship in the East India Company’s service.... I have been thinking that his best course is to purchase the appointment I have mentioned. These things are to be done, and are daily done, and it is far better for him to pay £500 or £600 than continue in his present course of life. I have strained all the efforts in my power with political friends, but in vain, and there is now but one course left--his purchasing the appointment. I am well aware that it is illegal, but there is little doubt that it can be done.” Another friend also had a younger brother who caused him much anxiety, and he unburdens himself in his letters to my father--Dick has been getting drunk, Dick has been making love, Dick has been borrowing money, Dick is dragging our good name in the mire. Thirty years afterwards he writes, “The assizes are just over, and Richard has tried the cases here with great ability and dignity.” I need hardly say that I have changed his name.