A hundred years ago
We wonder what the precise truth is as regards the feeling entertained by the English Poor, and especially the employed poor, towards the rich. Is it less or more bitter than it was fifty years ago? It is a fashion to give a favourable answer to that question, and to say that class-hatreds are dying out, but we do not feel sure that the sanguine view is altogether justified by the facts. That class-hatred has decreased is true, but then it takes two to make a quarrel, and there can be no doubt that the temper of the rich has greatly softened. They have been very prosperous, science has made life much easier to them, and they have ceased to live in that enforced intercourse with their inferiors which had so great an influence on our earlier society, and which, if it produced some benefits, produced also some evil effects. . . The 'Haves' have less to do with the 'Have-nots' than of old, and the separation, though it has possibly injured civilisation, has made the Haves much milder in opinion. They have become less suspicious, more tolerant of the poor as a body, and much more receptive of philanthropic doctrines. Very few now are ready to rely openly on force to keep down the people, and scarcely any defend injustice as essential to their own position.
Spectator, 1 'June 1878
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