[p. 109]
|109| principle of the equal entitlement of all citizens – with the external limitation of a ground rent of 10 pounds – to vote on those by whom they are to be represented. In that it has thus taken up into itself the contradiction of positive right and of the general principle of thought, it places what stems merely from the soil of the old feudal right in the far more glaring light of inconsistency than when all entitlements together still stood upon one and the same ground of positive right.
This principle by itself does indeed open up an infinity of claims, to which, in the first instance, the parliamentary power may well set limits; carried through in its consequence, it would be more a revolution than a mere reform. That such further claims, however, will not soon be raised with particular energy is attested by the, as it seems, very general satisfaction of the middle and lower classes of the three kingdoms with the Bill. The so-called practical sense of the British nation, that is, the sense directed to gain, subsistence, wealth, seems as yet to have been little seized by the needs of the material rights cited above; still less is anything to be effected with it by wholly formal principles of abstract equality; the fanaticism of such principles is more alien to this sense. This practical sense, it is true, is itself placed in immediate loss, in that a great multitude loses the gain of bribery through the raising of the condition of the quality of elector from 40 shillings to five times that. If this higher class3) has hitherto drawn a real advantage from its voting, it does not lose it. Only just now a member elected by the town of Liverpool
3) Hegel’s footnote. Recently in the House of Lords this higher class, of the 10 pound rent, has been given the name of Paupers.
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