But, for all that, he wrote about the English Aristocracy, as it stood in 1859:  “I desire to speak of it with the most unbounded respect.  It is the most popular of aristocracies; it has avoided faults which have ruined other aristocracies equally splendid.  While the aristocracy of France was destroying its estates by its extravagance, and itself by its impertinence, the aristocracy of England was founding English agriculture, and commanding respect by a personal dignity which made even its pride forgiven.  Historical and political England, the England of which we are all so proud, is of its making.”

In spite, however, of this high estimate of what Aristocracy had accomplished in the past, he felt that power was slipping away from it, and was passing into the hands of the Multitude.  But he also felt—­and it was certainly one of his most profound convictions—­that the Multitude could never govern properly, could never regulate its own affairs, could never present England adequately to the view of the world, unless it cast aside the Individualism in which it had been nurtured, and made up its mind to act in and through the State.  Perhaps his ideal of a State can best be described as an Educated Democracy, working by Collectivism in Government, Religion, and Social order.

“If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this:  that it is well for any great class or description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them.  They do not really understand its wants, they do not really provide for them.  A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its own wants, or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success.”  Amid many fluctuations of opinion on minor points, he was, from first to last, a thoroughgoing advocate for extending the action of the State.  In his ideal of government, the State was to play in a democratic age the part which the Aristocracy had played in earlier ages—­it was to govern and administer and control and inspire.  And, it was, in one important respect, a far nobler thing than the best aristocracy could ever be, for it was the “representative acting-power of the nation”; and so the relation of the citizen to the State was a much more dignified relation than that of a citizen to an aristocracy could ever be.  “Is it that of a dependant to a parental benefactor?  By no means:  it is that of a member in a partnership to the whole firm.”  The citizens of a State, the members of a society, are really “‘a partnership,’ as Burke nobly says, ’in all science, in all art, in every virtue, in all perfection.’  Towards this great final design of their connexion, they apply the aids which co-operative association can give them.”  We turn now to the practical application of this doctrine.