Moreover, the force of public opinion is rapidly increasing:  and some may bend to it, who are not so happy as to be swayed by a higher motive:  especially they who derive large incomes from lay-impropriations, in tracts of country where ministers are few and meagerly provided for.  A claim still stronger may be acknowledged by those who, round their superb habitations, or elsewhere, walk over vast estates which were lavished upon their ancestors by royal favouritism or purchased at insignificant prices after church-spoliation; such proprietors, though not conscience-stricken (there is no call for that), may be prompted to make a return for which their tenantry and dependents will learn to bless their names.  An impulse has been given; an accession of means from these several sources, co-operating with a well-considered change in the distribution of some parts of the property at present possessed by the Church, a change scrupulously founded upon due respect to law and justice, will, we trust, bring about so much of what her friends desire, that the rest may be calmly waited for, with thankfulness for what shall have been obtained.

Let it not be thought unbecoming in a layman to have treated at length a subject with which the clergy are more intimately conversant.  All may, without impropriety, speak of what deeply concerns all:  nor need an apology be offered for going over ground which has been trod before so ably and so often:  without pretending, however, to any thing of novelty, either in matter or manner, something may have been offered to view, which will save the writer from the imputation of having little to recommend his labour, but goodness of intention.

It was with reference to thoughts and feelings expressed in verse, that I entered upon the above notices, and with verse I will conclude.  The passage is extracted from my MSS. written above thirty years ago:  it turns upon the individual dignity which humbleness of social condition does not preclude, but frequently promotes.  It has no direct bearing upon clubs for the discussion of public affairs, nor upon political or trade-unions; but if a single workman—­who, being a member of one of those clubs, runs the risk of becoming an agitator, or who, being enrolled in a union, must be left without a will of his own, and therefore a slave—­should read these lines, and be touched by them, I should indeed rejoice, and little would I care for losing credit as a poet with intemperate critics, who think differently from me upon political philosophy or public measures, if the sober-minded admit that, in general views, my affections have been moved, and my imagination exercised, under and for the guidance of reason.

    Here might I pause, and bend in reverence
    To Nature, and the power of human minds;
    To men as they are men within themselves. 
    How oft high service is performed within,
    When all the external man is rude in show;