He knew that such a spirit slumbered, and more than slumbered, in many breasts, and he was opposed to any measure that would give it the slightest encouragement. He did not reckon on any abatement of discontent from the extension of the suffrage, and did not believe that the political appetite would be satisfied with anything short of a social revolution. So great were his fears, that on one occasion he expressed his apprehension that if the government then in office were to be removed, anarchy would immediately take possession. Nothing would have surprised or alarmed him more than to be told that by and by a Conservative Government would bring down the suffrage to a much lower point than the then Reform Bill proposed. But still more would he have wondered had he learned that fifty years after his death, and under all these radical changes, so far from the country being abandoned to anarchy, the law-abiding habit of the people would be as strong as ever, and the foundations of society as firm. When the great question of the Corn-Laws came up at a later period, Chalmers was in favour of the repeal; not chiefly for any important economical results that he expected from that step, but because it would, as he used to say, ’sweeten the breath of society.’ He would have been surprised at the remarkable commercial results which the abolition of the Corn-Laws, and the institution of the system of Free Trade have produced on the resources of the country. In addition to these considerations, another ground of his opposition to the Reform Bill was his respect for an aristocracy and the influence of an aristocracy, as contributing important elements to the welfare of a country. He held that ’in every land of law and liberty, with an order of men possessing large and independent affluence, there is better security for the general comfort and virtue of the whole than when society presents an aspect of almost unalleviated plebeianism.’ But, ’it is not for the sake of its ornaments and its chivalry alone that we want the high rank of our aristocracy to be upholden.’ It was for the spirit that they circulated through all ranks—a more noble spirit, he thought, than either France with its ’Citizen King,’ or the United States with their universal social equality, could inspire. In his intercourse with the aristocracy, it was the best and most congenial of them that admitted him to their society, and nothing charmed him more than to find a combination of rank and wealth with Christian principle and philanthropic activity, along with the charm of refined and gentle but unassuming manners. Such movements as the Reform Bill he deemed hurtful to the influence of the aristocracy, and therefore disadvantageous to the welfare of the country. It was a different set of aristocrats, and a different kind of policy he had to criticise when, on occasion of his last visit to London, he gave evidence to a