The attention of the
working classes was especially called by their leaders to the
contrast between the interest occasioned by the endangered
constitution of Jamaica, a petty and exhausted colony, and the
claims for the same constitutional rights by the working
millions of England. In the first instance, not a member was
absent from his place; men were brought indeed from distant
capitals to participate in the struggle and to decide it; the
debate lasted for days, almost for weeks; not a public man of
light and leading in the country withheld the expression of
his opinion; the fate of governments was involved in it;
cabinets were overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and
tumult of the strife, and for the first time for a long period
the Sovereign personally interposed in public transactions
with a significance of character, which made the working
classes almost believe that the privileged had at last found a
master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief.
The mean position which the Saxon multitude occupied as
distinguished from the Jamaica planters sunk deep into their
hearts. From that moment all hope of relief from the
demonstration of a high moral conduct in the millions, and the
exhibition of that well-regulated order of public life which
would intimate their fitness for the possession and fulfilment
of public rights, vanished.
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