It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England.

Thackeray’s remark reflects a Victorian-era belief that social stability depends less on aristocratic privilege or popular agitation than on the habits and interests of the “middling” ranks. Read this way, “safety” means political moderation, economic productivity, and a stake in orderly government: the middle class pays taxes, runs commerce and professions, and tends to prefer incremental reform over revolution. The line also carries an implicit critique of extremes—an idle or self-interested elite on one side and a potentially desperate, disenfranchised mass on the other—suggesting that national cohesion is secured by those with enough property and education to demand rights yet enough vulnerability to value stability.