of a judge, or the immunity of a member of the House of Commons; when
they were earned, as in the Middle Age, by severe education, earnest
labour, and life and death responsibility in peace and war, will demand
the abolition of those privileges, when no work is done in return for
them, with a voice which must be heard, for it is the voice of truth and
justice.

But with that righteous voice will mingle another, most wicked, and yet,
alas! most flattering to poor humanity--the voice of envy, simple and
undisguised; of envy, which moralists hold to be one of the basest of
human passions; which can never be justified, however hateful or unworthy
be the envied man. And when a whole people, or even a majority thereof,
shall be possessed by that, what is there that they will not do?

Some are surprised and puzzled when they find, in the French Revolution
of 1793, the noblest and the foulest characters labouring in concert, and
side by side--often, too, paradoxical as it may seem, united in the same
personage. The explanation is simple. Justice inspired the one; the
other was the child of simple envy. But this passion of envy, if it
becomes permanent and popular, may avenge itself, like all other sins. A
nation may say to itself, "Provided we have no superiors to fall our
pride, we are content. Liberty is a slight matter, provided we have
equality. Let us be slaves, provided we are all slaves alike." It may
destroy every standard of humanity above its own mean average; it may
forget that the old ruling class, in spite of all its defects and crimes,
did at least pretend to represent something higher than man's necessary
wants, plus the greed of amassing money; never meeting (at least in the
country districts) any one wiser or more refined than an official or a
priest drawn from the peasant class, it may lose the belief that any
standard higher than that is needed; and, all but forgetting the very