stions weigh least. There is, of course, no class wholly divorced
from good; and those exceptions to which Cowper could refer two
generations ago obtain still:

'We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways,
And one who wears a coronet, and prays:
Like gleanings of an olive tree, they show
Here and there one upon the topmost bough.'

But in at least the mass, religion has not been influential among the
governing classes in Britain since the days of the Commonwealth. It
has formed one of the great forces on which they have calculated--a
formidable power among the people, that they have striven, according
to the nature of the emergency, to quiet or awaken, bias or
control,--now for the ends of party, when an antagonist faction had to
be overborne and put down,--now for the general benefit of the
country, when a foreign enemy had to be repelled or an intestine
discord to be suppressed; but it has been peculiarly a force outside
the governing classes--external, not internal, to them,--a power which
it has been their special work to regulate and direct, not a power
which has regulated and directed them. The last British Government
which--God, according to Bacon, having done much for it--laboured
earnestly to do much for God, was that very remarkable one which
centred in the person of the Lord Protector.

Hence naturally much that is unsatisfactory to the comparatively
religious middle classes of the country, in the conduct, with regard
to religious questions, of the classes on whom devolves the work of
legislation. There is no real community of feeling and belief in these
matters between the two. To the extent to which religion is involved
in the legislative enactments of the time, the middle class is in
reality not represented, and the upper class does not represent. It
may not seem equally obvious, however, how there should be a lack of
representation, not only among our members of Parliament, but also
among our members of Council. They at least surely belong, it may be
said, to the middle classes, by whom and from among whom they are
chosen for their office. Certainly in some cases they do; in many
others, however, they form a class scarce less peculiar than those
upper classes out of which the legislators of the country come to be
drawn, simply because there is no other class in the field out of
which they can be selected.

The Reform and Municipality Bills wrought a mighty change in the Town
Co