On this point no one can speak with anything like the authority of Mr. Gladstone. Speaking of the repeal of the paper duty, this eloquent statesman has said within the present year, "I did to the best of my ability fight a hard battle for its repeal. And I find now that not only in its repeal was there involved the liberation of a great branch of trade, but there was involved a seed of social and moral good that has sprung up with rapidity, producing a harvest such as, I confess, I had hardly been sanguine enough to anticipate."[3] The cheap press now finds its way into the homes of the poorest, keeps them informed of the current public events, and makes them interested and anxious in all that concerns their country and its institutions; and, inasmuch as the press of the present day is, under proper conduct, well qualified to enlarge the minds of those whom it must instruct, it is a "seed of social and moral good" from which a constantly-increasing harvest of good fruit may be obtained. In view of such facts it cannot be said that, during the last quarter of a century, the industrial classes have been entirely thrown on their own resources for the means of their enjoyment and improvement. Over and above the tendency of the legislation of the past thirty years, the upper classes have felt it their duty, as it is unquestionably their interest, to attend to the wants and requirements of those at the bottom of the social scale. They are the safest when the vast mass of our working population are the happiest. Dr. Chalmers must have felt this when he wrote, "I would like to see a king upon the throne, not like an unsupported may-pole among a level population, but a king surrounded by a noble aristocracy and gradations below them, shelving downwards to the lowest basis of the people." Society has been very often and very truly likened to a pyramid, at the apex of which is the throne; gradually descending, we have substantial strata of the ruling, the upper, and the middle classes, the rough and strong material at the base not inappropriately said to represent the unpolished millions of our industrial population. How far it may be considered true that the foundations of English society are laid in this great class, and how much of the social superstructure they bear on their broad shoulders, we will not attempt to decide. We will content ourselves with saying that the well or ill-being of every man forming this great social pyramid must have a direct or reflex influence on every other man. _Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum._