'I won't keep you long, mates, and I'll commence after a good old-fashioned style. Once upon a time there lived on an island a great number of persons of all stations and degrees. Some were born with silver spoons in their mouths, some with iron ladles. Some were poor, some were rich; some idled and lived well; some worked all the working hours of the day and lived hard. These last were like ourselves, working men; and whilst they had much to be grateful for, they had also, no doubt, much to complain of. Many of them were married and had children; others were courting and on their road to wedlock. The wages they earned were about the same as we earn--say, from twenty to forty-five shillings a week--and they found they had as much as they could do to squeeze out a sufficient and reasonable subsistence for their families. This pressed heavily upon them, and they began to murmur at the inequality of things. "We can't enjoy ourselves as we ought," they said to one another; "we can't afford to eat meat every day; we can't afford to go to the theatres; we can't afford a holiday; we can't make any provision for sickness, or for the time when we are too old to work." These complaints they made, and a hundred others, many of which were undoubtedly well-founded from their point of view--and you will agree with me that the point of view which comes home to their own doors is the only point of view from which nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand care to argue, whether they be rich or poor. Some sensible and straightforward workmen among them resolved to agitate their grievances in such a manner as to make things better for their children, if not for themselves. You know, I daresay, what is the meaning of the Constitution: it is a system of fundamental principles for the government of rational and social beings. Well, these men were sensible enough to recognise that the Constitution by which they were governed, and which was accountable for the burdens which pressed heavily upon them, was not a creation, but a growth--a steady gradual growth of many centuries. Let us liken it to an old and deeply-rooted tree, which by undue favour or by force of circumstance had grown crooked--but a tree, nevertheless, from which they drew food and protection. The common sense of these men told them that desolation and misery would fall upon them if by violent and sudden means they strove to _force_ the crooked tree straight. The violent straining of the fibres would weaken them, and would so destroy the power of reproduction that the tree would not be able to bear sufficient food for those who lived in the shadow of its branches. And as to planting another, and expecting it to grow up and have healthy limbs in a night----well, you know what a foolish expectation that would have been! "But," they said, "we can sow the seed for another and a healthier tree, and while it grows we will wait, and watch, and assist it to the extent of our wisdom, and we'll