One hundred years ago
The strong opposition which the Representation of the People Bill en- counters is due much less to any dread of the people than to the mortification of two classes which anticipate their own deposition from power. The landlords and farmers are making a bitter fight for their county influence, it is true. They see in themselves the only classes which are still specially represented as classes, and, of course, they do not like to lose their exceptional position. But they find it a very different thing to fight for privilege, without any true panic in their hearts as to the consequences of the change proposed, from what they would find it to clamour against that ruin of the State which they would have an- ticipated from this measure twenty years ago, and still more confidently fifty years ago. Not even the most prominent of the Conservatives, — not even Mr James Lowther, — regards the admis- sion of two millions of fresh voters as likely to be ruinous now.
Spectator, 31 May 1884
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