I thus began to fall into that easy state of indifference which seems rapidly becoming the general condition of the mass of people who are supposed by their votes to control municipal affairs; I retained, however, an uneasy consciousness that in some way I was failing to meet a duty that was laid upon me. I was roused from this fatal moral lethargy by witnessing what seemed to me an act of gross injustice--viz., a robbery of the poor of their inheritance. This was the diversion of the funds of the Magdalen Charity (a bequest from the piety and beneficence of past ages, now grown to an income of some thousands annually) to the foundation of a middle-class grammar school. The injustice was committed under the sanction of the Charity Commissioners, notwithstanding a brave fight by some of our conscientious inhabitants, carried on for more than two years. But class interests and short-sighted officialism proved stronger than justice in this case. So painful an experience effectually opened my eyes to the irreligion of not attending to the duties which lie nearest to us, and I saw that the condition of the poor is very near to us. I fully realized, also, for the first time, the constant duty which rests upon all those to whom special municipal rights are given, to concern themselves with the management of the town in which they live, this responsibility especially resting upon every one on whom is laid the duty of voting. Beginning, then, to attend my parish meetings, my sympathy was soon aroused by seeing the bitter struggle of the industrious poor going on all around me, to avoid sinking into pauperism. Cases of inability to pay the rates were constantly coming before us[22] from weary struggling men and women, who, if they sometimes ‘drink and forget their poverty,’ demand pity more than blame.