INTRODUCTION lxxxiii

insult to make any man incapable of giving an opinion: only let the proper weight be attached to his opinion. In the same way I entered into no discussion of the way in which the land might keep up or increase its value. I said only that if any harm was done, that would be the harm. As for D’Israeli, you will see by my day before yesterday’s letter that I have no animosity against him. I know nothing about Wood.¹ D’Israeli’s works give me the idea of his being a coxcomb, but clever; only the last person fit to make a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps Wood was worse; I think it is very likely there may go as much brains to write a bad novel as to make a very good politician, in the modern sense of the term....”

“March 30.-I had yesterday your nice letter from Darlington, and am very glad indeed to hear that you respect the present Ministry. I should be exceedingly sorry if any letters of mine were to do any harm to people whom you respected, and who were doing as well as they could, and I shall be excessively so if anything said in the letters you are just now receiving induces you to publish what may at present do harm, though I believe it would in the long run do good. I have thought for three years back over all the points to which you allude respecting election. I should be very glad if it were possible to keep the common people from thinking about governments, but, since the invention of printing, it is not-of all impossibilities that is now the most so; the only question is how to make them of exactly the proper weight in the State, and no more. At present the electing body of England is the lower and easily bribable middle class. I want to add to this the mob whom it would be too troublesome to bribe at 2s. 6d. each, and the upper classes, in a mass of weight proportioned to their rank, sense, and wealth. You and I have both our vote, and so has, I suppose, our radical coachman. I don’t think it worth my while to give in my one vote. He does, and the coachmen carry it. According to my system, he would have, being now 70, fifty votes, and I four or five hundred. I should take the trouble to vote, and swamp him and a good many more radicals. As for the difficulty of counting, I believe it is to an accountant as easy to add in hundreds as in tens; for verification, every man should have his name and number of votes given on a seal which should be verified on certain days, called Verification Days, every five years. At an election he should walk into the registering room, show his seal, write its number opposite his candidate’s name, his own name being taken at the same time in order of its letter, and walk out again. Not much confusion in this. And there should be no talking at elections.

¹Sir Charles Wood, first Viscount Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord John Russell’s Administration, 1846-1852.

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