I wish to see them receive fair play, and would do my utmost to secure their return to the House of Commons, I must protest against the bigotry and cant which sets up a spurious exclusive standard of virtue, and indulges in the aristocratic vice of despising all those who are outside a privileged order.
Let me tell you that it is a very easy thing for a working man to be a radical, especially in a large town where individual politics are lost in the crowd: in becoming a radical, he obtains popularity in his class, sympathy from his family, and frequently a road for ambition. But it is a very different thing with the man belonging to the upper or middle class who espouses radicalism. For him there are only cold looks from wondering friends—perhaps alienation from those who are dear—while parliamentary and public life are closed to him on account of his principles, and in some cases, a fortune is sacrificed in their defence. I have heard that Ernest Jones deliberately sacrificed a fortune of £2000 a year, offered by an uncle, rather than desert his principles. Speaking personally, I may say that I have done nothing but lose money ever since I have taken to politics, and that I should have been in parliament a dozen years ago if I could have simulated Conservative or Whig principles. The upper or middle class man, as far as my experience goes, most frequently loses by radicalism: the working class radical, though there are many cases of sacrifice on his part, is likely to obtain some personal distinction by his politics, and certainly he is never called upon to brave unpopularity in his own class. These observations may be worth the consideration of those who make grand claims to superiority of motive founded upon their present or previous connection with the Labour Class. If manual labour is to be regarded as the conclusive test of political wisdom, we must go where we find most of it, and shall be called upon to recognise a distinction between the coalheaver and the mechanic. I submit that what we want to represent us is mind— generous mind which is in sympathy with the wants of those who toil and suffer. Let us take this mind, without prejudice or suspicion, whether it be discovered beneath fine linen or beneath a fustian jacket.
Manhood Suffrage.
Now about the suffrage. I am quite prepared to join in a vote for manhood suffrage, as I would in a vote for universal justice, but having done this I insist upon passing on to practical progressive measures. I believe manhood suffrage (I regret that manhood does not date from the age of twenty-
