Tory Government: There Is a Class Which Ought to Monopolize Government Office

Tory government, according to the Globe, held 'that there is a certain class, on whose brows is stampt Legislator, or Ruler of the mass, without regard to their qualification for such an office.' The Examiner also ridiculed the notion that there was a class which ought to monopolize government office. There was only 'an assumed caste' of ambitious men who cloaked 'their selfishness and the haughty superciliousness' of their demands in talk of a virtuous gentry.

--Jeffrey L. McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 256.