The plan of having the
number of a man's votes regulated by his calling and intelligence
was thoroughly Benthamite. It was as complete and logical as a
proposition in Euclid, and in 1825 would have looked attractive;
but in 1855 the power of doing this nice work had completely
passed out of everybody's hands--indeed, the desire of political
perfection had greatly abated. His lofty and eloquent plaints on
the decline of social freedom helped to strengthen the charge of
want of practicalness, which in our day is so injurious to a
man's political influence, and when he entered Parliament,
although he disappointed none of those who best understood him,
the outside multitude, who had begun to look on him as a prophet,
were somewhat chagrined that he was not readier in parrying the
thrusts of the trained gladiators of the House of Commons. It was
the book on the "Subjection of Women," however, which most shook
the allegiance of his more educated followers, because it was
marked by the widest departures from his own rules of thinking.
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