Well! and does not this
ground of exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the
infirm, to men in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose
maintenance, be it scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others?
How far are we to go? Where must we stop? What classes should we admit?
Whom must we disfranchise? The objects concerning whom we are to determine
these questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by
_degrees_ only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle
on which the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of
degree. Nothing, therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes
of which do not obey any necessary law, can be the object of pure science,
or determinate by mere reason,"--Vol. i. p. 341, ED.]
_March_ 20. 1831.
GOVERNMENT.--EARL GREY.
Government is not founded on property, taken merely as such, in the
abstract; it is founded on _unequal_ property; the inequality is an
essential term in the position. The phrases--higher, middle, and lower
classes, with reference to this point of representation--are delusive; no
such divisions as classes actually exist in society. There is an
indissoluble blending and interfusion of persons from top to bottom; and no
man can trace a line of separation through them, except such a confessedly
unmeaning and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10_l_.
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