distribution of the uncultivated districts of the country. Universal suffrage would assuredly lead to these measures, but in doing so it would assuredly lead to civil war, and this, beside its other attendant evils, would confirm the nation in its military habits, with which true liberty is incompatible. Any sudden attempt to establish universal suffrage would result in an immature attempt to establish a Republic; and if this should fail, the last state of the nation might be worse than the first. Now, therefore, in 1819-20, as three years earlier when Shelley wrote at Marlow his pamphlet on Reform, he advocates a gradual reform of the representative system. He would have the House of Lords remain for the present as it is to represent the aristocracy. The House of Commons should represent, in fact and not merely in name, the people. The entire empire might be divided. into five hundred districts, each returning one member of Parliament. In each district there would be a population of 40,000, or, allowing two-thirds for women and children, 13,300 men. A small property qualification, proved by the payment of a certain sum in direct taxes, should distinguish the electors.

"Mr Bentham and other writers have urged the admission of females to the right of suffrage. This attempt seems somewhat immature. Should my opinion be the result of despondency, the writer of these pages would be the last to withhold his vote from any system which might tend to an equal and full development of the capacities of all living beings."

As to the vote by ballot, the method appeared to Shelley to be too mechanical.

"The elector and the elected ought to meet face to face and interchange the meanings of actual presence, share some common

impulses, and in a degree understand each other. There ought to be a common sympathy. . . among the electors themselves. The imagination would thus be strongly excited, and a mass of generous and enlarged and popular sentiments be awakened which would give the vitality of [sentence unfinished.] That republican boldness of censuring and judging one another, which has been exerted in England under the name of 'public opinion,' though perverted from its true uses into an instrument of prejudice and calumny, would then be applied to its genuine purposes. Year by year the people would become more susceptible of assuming forms of government more simple and beneficent."

The central principle upon which all reform should be based is that of the natural equality of men, not as regards property, but as regards rights. The equality taught by Christ is moral rather than political, and it is only as regards abstract principles, not their practical application, that morals and politics can be regarded as parts of the same science. Equality in possessions must be "the last result of the utmost refinements of civilisation." It is a goal on which from far off we may gaze. "We derive tranquillity, and courage, and grandeur of soul from contemplating an object which is, because we will it, and may be, because we hope and desire it, and must be, if succeeding generations of the enlightened sincerely and earnestly seek it." From such outlook upon a great and remote object we draw inspiration; then "it becomes us with patience and resolution to apply ourselves to accommodating theories to immediate practice."

Whether the reform, which is now inevitable, be gradual and moderate or violent and extreme, depends largely on the action of the Government. If the Government compel the nation to take the task of

reformation into its own hands, the abolition of monarchy and aristocracy must infallibly follow. "No friend of mankind and of his country can desire that such a crisis should arrive."

"If reform shall be begun by the existing government, let us be contented with a limited beginning, with any whatsoever opening. Let the rotten boroughs be disfranchised, and their rights transferred to the unrepresented cities and districts of the nation. It is no matter how slow, gradual, and cautious be the change. We shall demand more and more with firmness and moderation, never anticipating but never deferring the moment of successful opposition, so that the people may become capable of exercising the sfunctions of sovereignty in proportion as they acquire the posses -ion of it. If reform could begin from within the Houses of Parliament as constituted at present, it appears to me that what is called moderate reform, that is, a suffrage whose qualification should be the possession of a certain small property, and triennial Parliaments, would be principles, a system in which for the sake of obtaining without bloodshed or confusion ulterior improvements of a more important character, all reformers ought to acquiesce. Not that such are first principles, or that they would produce a system of perfect social institution, or one approaching it. But nothing is more idle than to reject a limited benefit because we cannot without great sacrifices obtain an unlimited one. We might thus reject a Republic, if it were attainable, on the plea that the imagination of man can conceive of something more absolutely perfect. Towards whatsoever we regard as perfect, undoubtedly, it is no less our duty than it is our nature to press forward; this is the generous enthusiasm which accomplishes, not indeed the consummation after which it aspires, but one which approaches it in a degree far nearer than if the whole powers had not been developed by a delusion which is not a delusion. It is in politics rather than in religion that faith is meritorious."

If the Houses of Parliament obstinately and perpetually refuse to concede any reform to the people, Shelley gives his vote for universal suffrage and equal representation. "But it is asked, How shall this be accomplished in defiance of, and in opposition to, the consti

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tuted authorities of the nation; they who possess, whether with or without its consent, the command of a standing army and of a legion of spies and police officers, and all the strings of that complicated mechanism with which the hopes and fears of men are moved like puppets?" This question Shelley meets, and answers by another: "Will you endure to pay the half of your earnings to maintain in luxury and idleness the confederation of your tyrants as the reward of a successful conspiracy to defraud and oppress you? Will you make your tame cowardice, and the branding record of it the everlasting inheritance of your degraded posterity? Not only this, but will you render by your torpid endurance this condition of things as permanent as the system of castes in India, by which the same horrible injustice is perpetrated under another form? Assuredly no Englishman by whom these propositions are understood will answer in the affirmative, and the opposite side of the alternative remains."

When in any nation the majority arrive at a conviction that it is their duty and their interest to divest the minority of a power employed to their disadvantage, and the minority are sufficiently mistaken as to believe that their superiority is tenable, a struggle must ensue :

"If the majority are enlightened, united, impelled by a uniform enthusiasm, and animated by a distinct and powerful apprehension of their object and full confidence in their undoubted power, the struggle is merely nominal. The minority perceive the approaches of the development of an irresistible force, by the influence of the public opinion of their weakness on those political forms, of which no government, but an absolute despotism, is devoid. They divest themselves of their usurped distinctions, and the public tranquillity is not disturbed by the revolution.

"But these conditions may only be imperfectly fulfilled by the state of a people grossly oppressed and impatient to cast off the load. Their enthusiasm may have been subdued by the killing weight of toil and suffering; they may be panic-stricken and disunited by the oppressors and the demagogues; the influence of fraud may have been sufficient to weaken the union of classes which compose them by suggesting jealousies; and the position of the conspirators, though it is to be forced by repeated assaults, may be tenable until that the siege can be vigorously urged."

Under such circumstances as these, what is the duty of a patriotic citizen?

"The true patriot will endeavour to enlighten and to unite the nation, and animate it with enthusiasm and confidence. For this purpose he will be indefatigable in promulgating political truth. He will endeavour to rally round one standard the divided friends of liberty, and make them forget the subordinate objects with regard to which they differ by appealing to that respecting which they are all agreed. He will promote such open confederations among men of principle and spirit as may tend to make their intention and their efforts converge to a common centre. He will discourage all secret associations which have a tendency, by making the nation's will develop itself in a partial and premature manner, to cause tumult and confusion. He will urge the necessity of exciting the people frequently to exercise the right of assembling in such limited numbers as that all present may be actual parties to the measures of the day. Lastly, if circumstances had collected a considerable number, as at Manchester on the memorable 16th of August; if the tyrants send their troops to fire upon them or cut them down unless they disperse, he will exhort them peaceably to defy the danger, and to expect without resistance the onset of the cavalry, and wait with folded arms the event of the fire of the artillery, and receive with unshrinking bosoms the bayonets of charging battalions. Men are every day persuaded to incur greater perils for a manifest advantage. And this not because active resistance is not justifiable, but because in this instance temperance and courage produce greater advantages than the most decisive victory."

Shelley's expectation was that the soldiery, if calmly and courageously met, would refuse to fire upon the