London, November 29. If one engages for a time in a quiet study 
of English conditions, if one comes to understand clearly the weak 
foundation on which the entire artificial edifice of England’s social 
and political well-being rests, and then suddenly finds oneself 
amidst the hustle and bustle of English life, one is astonished at 
the remarkable calm and confidence with which everyone here 
looks to the future. The ruling classes, whether middle class or 
aristocracy, whether Whigs or Tories, have now ruled the country 
for so long that the emergence of any other party seems to them 
an impossibility. No matter how much one may point out to them 
their sins, their inconsistency, their vacillating policy, their blind- 
ness and obduracy, and the precarious state of the country which 
is the outcome of their principles, they remain unshaken in their 
assurance and confident in their ability to lead the country to a 
better position. And if a revolution in England is impossible, as 
they at least assert, they have indeed little to fear for their rule. If 
Chartism has the patience to wait until it has won a majority in the 
House of Commons, it will have to go on for many a year to come 
holding meetings and demanding the six points of the People’s 
Charter; the middle class will never renounce its occupation of 
the House of Commons by agreeing to universal suffrage, since it 
would immediately be outvoted by the huge number of the 
unpropertied as the inevitable consequence of giving way on this 
point. Therefore Chartism has not yet been able to gain any hold 
among educated people in England and will remain unable to do 
so for some time yet. When people here speak of Chartists and 
radicals, they almost always have in mind the lower strata of 


society, the mass of proletarians, and it is true that the party’s few 
educated spokesmen are lost among the masses. 

Moreover, irrespective of political interests, the middle class can 
only be Whig or Tory, never Chartist. Its principle is the 
preservation of the status quo; in England’s present condition, 
“legal progress” and universal suffrage would inevitably result in a 
revolution. It is therefore quite natural that the practical English- 
man, for whom politics is a matter of arithmetic or even a com- 
mercial affair, pays no attention at all to the power of Chartism, 
which is quietly growing to formidable proportions, since it cannot 
be expressed in numbers, except perhaps in such as, in relation to 
the government and Parliament, would be noughts after the deci- 
mal point. But there are things which are beyond numerical calcu- 
lation, and it is here that the super-cleverness of English Whig- 
gery and Toryism will suffer a debacle, when the time comes.