noble convictions by the delegates of their choice, and that
an antique and decrepid authority must bow before the irresistible
influence of their moral power. These delegates of their choice turned
out to be a plebeian senate of wild ambitions and sinister and selfish
ends, while the decrepid authority that she had been taught existed only
by the sufferance of the millions was compact and organized, with
every element of physical power at its command, and supported by the
interests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and the strong
prejudices of classes influential not merely from their wealth but even
by their numbers.

Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of the rich towards
the poor was not that sentiment of unmingled hate and scorn which she
associated with Norman conquerors and feudal laws. She would ascribe
rather the want of sympathy that unquestionably exists between Wealth
and Work in England, to mutual ignorance between the classes which
possess these two great elements of national prosperity; and though the
source of that ignorance was to be sought in antecedent circumstances
of violence and oppression, the consequences perhaps had outlived the
causes, as customs survive opinions.

Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud and passionate halls
where assembles the Parliament of England; that rapacious, violent, and
haughty body, that had brought kings and prelates to the block; spoiled
churches and then seized the sacred manors for their personal prey;
invested their own possessions with infinite privileges, and
then mortgaged for their state and empire the labour of countless
generations. Could the voice of solace sound from such a quarter?

Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought; not now to be read
for the first time; but now for the first time to be read alone,
undisturbed, in a scene of softness and serenity. It contained a
report of the debate in the House of Commons on the presentation of the
National Petition; that important document which had been the means of
drawing forth Sybil from her solitude, and of teaching her something
of that world of which she had often pondered, and yet which she had so
inaccurately preconceived.

Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in that proud Parliament, that
free from the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal truths:
the voice of a noble, who without being a demagogue, had upheld the
popular cause; had pronounced hi