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 dead, and Peggy and her young folks were all full of preparations for the outward voyage to Australia.  Tom hoped to serve out his time to as great advantage in Melbourne as in Edinburgh; and he really was as clever and as skilful as if he had been seven instead of less than two years at the engineering.  Francis had visited much at Miss Thomson’s, and had Seen a great deal of Mary Forrester, but not with the result that Jane had anticipated; and now, before she had made any impression on him beyond the conviction that she was an exceedingly amiable girl, the plans of the whole family were changed,