ment to rich men. This is a rooted feeling among our legislators
of both political parties, and is about the only point on which I
believe them to be really ill-intentioned. They care comparatively
little who votes, so long as they feel assured that none but persons of
their own class can be voted for. They know that they can rely on the
fellow-feeling of one of their own class with another, while the
subservience of NOUVEAUX ENRICHIS, who knocking at the door of the
class, is a still surer reliance, and that nothing very democratic need
be apprehended under the most democratic suffrage, as long as
democratic persons can be prevented from being elected to Parliament."

But outside of the walls of the House of Commons, Francis had found
many who agreed with him as to the necessity for some great change. All
accounts from America, and even those from Australia, proved that the
wide extension of the suffrage without some precaution to secure the
minorities from extinction, tended to political degeneration, even in
countries where there was great material prosperity, abundance of land,
considerable advantages of education, and greater equality of condition
than in Britain. The march of affairs was all steadily towards more
democratic institutions, and Francis was not deceived by temporary and
partial reactions. The extension of the suffrage must come, and England
ought to be prepared to meet it. He was willing to take advantage of
every suggestion and every discovery that might be made; and when a
scheme more comprehensive than that of Sir Rowland Hill for our first
Adelaide Corporation, and incomparably better than Lord John Russell's,
was first launched into the world, amid many sneers that it was
utopian, crotchety, and un-English, he adopted it with an enthusiasm
which he knew Jane Melville would approve of. The criticism and the
ridicule only strengthened his conviction of the feasibility of the
scheme, and his hopes of its success. Jane was sure to be proud if he
could be the means of bringing about so great a reform. They had often
talked on the subject, but had never been able to devise anything
comparable to this. Mr. Sinclair, with whom the matter had been gone
over most carefully, was quite as enthusiastic about it as the
discoverer himself, and Francis wished more than ever that the entrance
to Parliament was less expensive and less difficult, so that he might
have so good a coadjutor.

Old Thomas Lowrie was de