But this “self-government which is life” has been despised by those holding a commission from the nation. Was this law against which we contend made by the nation? Assuredly not. Nay, nor was it even made by Parliament, but by a mere fraction of Parliament casting off for a time the faith and responsibility of men commissioned by the nation. The people were not yet so degraded as to consent to such a law. Even where their education is but poor, the people nevertheless still know right from wrong; they are yet able to distinguish between truth and falsehood, between freedom and slavery. It may be said of our industrial classes generally as Lord Chatham said of our forefathers who framed the Great Charter:—“Their virtues were rude and uncultivated, but they were great and sincere; their understandings were as little polished as their manners, but they had hearts to distinguish right from wrong; they had heads to distinguish truth from falsehood; they understood the rights of humanity, and they had spirit to maintain them.” All the evils incident to our system of government arise when that government ceases at any period to be honestly representative of those masses of the people whose spirit we have described; and it is evident that when our rulers are swayed too much by any particular class in the community, they become no longer truly representative. The narrower the class of persons exercising this undue influence, the greater is the danger; and that danger is heightened still further when this influence proceeds exclusively from men of one profession. The profession to which I now allude is the medical profession. I wish to guard myself against the suspicion of a general and unreasoning prejudice against this profession, which Guizot has styled “the mournfullest and the noblest.” We have all of us too much reason to be grateful to men of that profession, many of whom we know by experience to be among the truest friends of humanity. But physicians who hang about courts, who have the ear of royalty, and of aristocratic public officers, and who exercise an influence over superstitious households of the great, somewhat resembling that formerly exercised by the priest in Italy and Spain, when allowed to influence our legislation in the direct manner which they have done of late, must be content to endure the searching judgment of the people at large, and ultimately to fall under the people’s indignation, if they be found to be interfering with our laws, in defiance or in ignorance of the principles of our Constitution. Such medical men have not unfrequently risen to posts of honour, high among the aristocracy of the land, by an energy and talent which we cannot fail to admire; but it cannot be denied that they frequently attain to excellence in the single line of professional study to which they have been necessarily devoted, at the expense of other portions of education essentially needful for those who would venture on meddling