Macaulay, the intellectualist of the Whigs, asserted that the extension of suffrage to the masses would surely result in arousing the predatory impulses of the propertyless masses who would use their new political power to despoil the middle as well as upper class.
John Dewey: “Macaulay, the intellectualist of the Whigs, asserted that the extension of suffrage to the masses would surely result in…”
Editor's note · Context
Dewey recounts Macaulay's concerns about the political power of the propertyless masses.
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The problem of securing diffused and seminal intelligence can be solved only in the degree in which local communal life becomes a reality.
Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought.
Competition will continue, but it will be less rivalry for acquisition of material goods, and more an emulation of local groups to enrich direct experience with appreciatively enjoyed intellectual and artistic wealth.
But the wingèd words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech.