SOCIAL EQUALITY. CHAPTER I. THE AIM OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. LET us suppose ourselves in the High Street of an English country town, watching the scene that on any afternoon it might present to us. Before one of the principal shops a large bouche is waiting, and the head of the establishment stands at the carriage door, and takes the esteemed orders' of some magnate of the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, along the pavement, move various well-known figuresa spectacled solicitor in his black frock-coat; knots of labourers, their jackets soiled with earth; a grocer's wife, with a boa and corkscrew curls; at the same time a farmer has rattled by in his dog-cart, followed slowly by B the country rector's phaeton. The central group in the drama is the large bouche with its occupant: All the passers-by turn to it for at least a moment, and acknowledge either by their looks or salutations the importance of the principle that is embodied in it. The solicitor squints at it; the farmer touches his hat to it; the rector waves his hand to it. Nor is this all: for between these minor characters there are looks or salutations also; and they are each charged with a meaning either of respect or of condescension. The whole forms a scene with which we are all familiar; every object and every incident can be imagined without an effort; and few scenes, to many people, could seem more prosaic and common-place. Let us now introduce into it two further characters-an English Radical and a Continental Democrat; and let us see the way in which it would strike them. Far from regarding it with acquiescent apathy, they would both declare that to their eyes it was full of injustice and abuses, and that all its details sug |