The 'maintaining classes', the great multitude who maintained
the state of the world, were not traditionally part of the political
state. They did not as yet enjoy (as the phrase goes) a 'con-
stitutional presence', but were represented in the politics of
the nation by their attachment to one or another of the great
interests which were represented in the legislature. As William
Paley expressed it: 'We have a House of Commons composed
of 540 members, in which number are to be found the most
considerable landholders and merchants of the kingdom; the
heads of the army, the navy and the law; the occupiers of the
great offices of state; together with many private individuals
eminent for their knowledge, eloquence, or activity. Now if the
country be not safe in such hands, in whose may we confide its
interests?. . . The different interests are actually represented,
and of course the people virtually.'

The term 'the people', as Disraeli insisted as late as 1834 in
The Spirit of Whiggism, was not a political term, but a term of
natural history. Shelley, writing his Philosophic View of Reform
in 1819-20, however, had pointed out that 'Virtual Representa-
tion' of the common people had ceased to be a valid argument,
for a Fourth Class had now made its appearance in the nation,
the unrepresented multitude. The nation had become multiplied
into a denomination which had no constitutional presence in the
state, a denomination whose interests had previously been
sensibly interwoven with that of those who enjoyed a con-
stitutional presence', but were so no longer. The mass of the
people, in fact, was becoming a properly political term.

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