“The writings of Malthus, who considers men as mere animals, may have had influence in the producing of this change; and we now frequently hear the working classes called _the population_, just as we call the animals upon a farm _the stock_. It is curious, too, that this contumely towards the great mass of the people should have grown into vogue amongst the country gentlemen and their families, at a time when they themselves are daily and hourly losing the estates descended to them from their forefathers. They see themselves stripped of the means of keeping that hospitality, for which England was once so famed, and of which there remains nothing now but the _word_ in the dictionary: they see themselves reduced to close up their windows, live in a corner of their houses, sneak away to London, crib their servants in their wages, and hardly able to keep up a little tawdry show; and it would seem, that for the contempt which they feel that their meanness must necessarily excite in the common people, they endeavour to avenge themselves, and at the same time to disguise their own humiliation, by their haughty and insolent deportment towards the latter: thus exhibiting that mixture of poverty and pride, which has ever been deemed better calculated than any other union of qualities to draw down upon the possessors the most unfriendly of human feelings. “It is curious, also, that this fit of novel and ridiculous pride should have afflicted the minds of these persons at the very time that the working classes are become singularly enlightened. Not enlightened in the manner that the sons of Cant and Corruption would wish them to be. The conceited creatures in what is called high life, and who always judge of men by their clothes, imagine that the working classes of the people have their minds quite sufficiently occupied by the reading of what are called ‘religious and moral tracts.’ Simple, insipid dialogues and stories, calculated for the minds of children seven or eight years old, or for those of savages just beginning to be civilized. These conceited persons have no idea that the minds of the working classes ever presume to rise above their infantine level.… The working classes of the people understand well what they read; they dive into all matters connected with politics; they have a relish not only for interesting statement, for argument, for discussion; but the powers of _eloquence_ are by no means lost upon them.… In the report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords, it is observed that, since the people have betaken themselves to this reading and this discussing, ‘their character seems to be wholly changed.’ I believe it is indeed! For it is the natural effect of enlightening the mind to change the character. But