e so many, and so totally irresponsible by their numbers--to be
avoided, if you give the people the right of self-government?"

"God help the nation where self-government, in its literal sense,
exists, Hugh! The term is conventional, and, properly viewed, means a
government in which the source of authority is the body of the nation,
and does not come from any other sovereign. When a people that has been
properly educated by experience calmly selects its agents, and coolly
sets to work to adopt a set of principles to form its fundamental law or
constitution, the machine is on the right track, and will work well
enough so long as it is kept there; but this running off, and altering
the fundamental principles every time a political faction has need of
recruits, is introducing tyranny in its worst form--a tyranny that is
just as dangerous to real liberty as hypocrisy is to religion!"

We were now approaching St. Andrew's church and the rectory, with its
glebe, the latter lying contiguous to the church-yard, or, as it is an
Americanism to say, the "graveyard." There had been an evident
improvement around the rectory since I had last seen it. Shrubbery had
been planted, care was taken of the fences, the garden was neatly and
well worked, the fields looked smooth, and everything denoted that it
was "new lords and new laws." The last incumbent had been a whining,
complaining, narrow-minded, selfish and lazy priest, the least estimable
of all human characters, short of the commission of the actual and
higher crimes; but his successor had the reputation of being a devout
and real Christian--one who took delight in the duties of his holy
office, and who served God because he loved him. I am fully aware how
laborious is the life of a country priest, and how contracted and mean
is the pittance he in common receives, and how much more he merits than
he gets, if his reward were to be graduated by things here. But this
picture, like every other, has its different sides, and occasionally men
do certainly enter the church from motives as little as possible
connected with those that ought to influence them.

"There is the wagon of Mr. Warren, at his door," observed my uncle, as
we passed the rectory. "Can it be that he intends visiting the village
also, on an occasion like this?"

"Nothing more probable, sir, if the character Patt has given of him be
true," I answered. "She tells me he has been active in endeavouring to
put down the co