THE MASSES AND THE CLASSES.
LTO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTILTOR." J
SIR,—Your "News of the Week," of July 3rd (p. 866), contains an unconscious humour of a lateral reading, worth marking at this time :—
fully as their neighbours."
Quite so. And there, as Corporal Nym observes, is the "humour of it." Was ever in British history anything quite so pitiable as this universal whirligig ? Let us pray that of the "New Democracy," Ce n'est que is premier pas qui co4te. It coiltes a good deal, though. Even out of the worst, however, the philosophic mind may yet suck fun, as the weasel sucks eggs ; and poor Mr. Goschen's defeat may serve a lofty purpose in the explosion of the Shams, if it saves the wretched Englishman (quite an outsider in all this, where Ireland has been the liti- gant and Scotland the arbiter) from the awful nightmare of the Scotch intellect.
Nothing has been much droller than Mr. Herbert GiacIstene's touching reliance on the "stupid classes" as his only friends ; and if Edinburgh likes the distinction, why should she be grudged it Oh, Scotis Edina tuis ! Who on earth, by-the-bye, started. that curious antithesis between classes and masses ? If I was a mass, I should resent it. Doesn't a mass belong to a class ?- Let us go back to origins, for it is time. " Democracy " used not to mean the mere converse of "aristocracy," viz., govern- ment by the lower class ; but it meant the good old forgotten word, "the commonwealth," the government by all classes for the benefit of all. What are our so-called "working classes "- alias masses, I suppose—going to gain for the country, if for one privilege they are merely to set up another ? Is that the new Liberalism ? And to what end, Mr. Herbert Glad- stone ? There is nothing new under the sun, and it is profitable for the hour to study a quaint old book, called "Walker's Original," in which, fifty years ago, the present diffi- culty and the "cow and the acres" are all anticipated and dis cussed. Quoth the author :—" By the 'Democratic'
I mean the principle of popular government fitly organised. By the 'Ochlocratic' principle, I mean the principle of mob- government, or government by too large masses" [the true- sense of "mass"]. "By the 'Oligarchic' principle, I mean: the exclusive government, or government by too few."
And "Ochlocracy," addeth the author, "(which is derived from two Greek words signifying mob-government), is the moat inquisitorial, dictatorial, and disgusting of all governments,. and its tendency is to despotism as a more tolerable form of tyranny. It is an unwieldy monster, more potent in the tail than in the head." Quite so, again. The Lord preserve utt from the "New Ochlocracy" and its priests ; and the choice between snob-law and mob-law which Mr. Herbert Gladstone- is so anxious to drive na to.—I am, Sir,
" Mr. Morley repeated that he would be no party to any scheme which left the Land Question in Ireland upon the shoulders of an Irish Government."
"Mr. Frederic Harrison
expresses an unhesitating convic- tion that the Irish are capable of a National Government, and will work it as regularly and success-
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