The religious prophets, the Elijahs and the Baptists, the Savonarolas and the Bunyans, were the only real democrats, the only real disbelievers in the efficacy of fashion and station and wealth. They did conceive that the problem par excellence was not the problem of the poor, but the problem of the rich. They did go into kings' palaces and rebuke them as if they were the scum of the earth. They did speak to princes as the modern philanthropist speaks to costermongers. They did hope that there might be some real possibilities in peers and plutocrats, as we hope that there may be some real possibilities in vagabonds and thieves. They, I repeat, were perhaps the only real democrats that the world has ever seen. For it is no democracy, but only a foolish masquerade of aristocracy, when it is only possible for the aristocrat to be genuinely interested in the welfare of the plebeian. The real democracy is found when the plebeian may be genuinely interested in the welfare of the aristocrat.

-December 7, 1901, The Speaker