INJUSTICE 217 



I could not restrain the poignancy of my feelings at thus 

 being deliberately handed over to destitution, without 

 pity and without a thought, by a gentleman with a family 

 of his own, that, when young, I frequently had charge of 

 (one of them has, deservedly, risen to almost the highest 

 dignity in the Church). He evidently had it in his 

 power, by holding out his hand, to save me from going 

 down Avith the wreck he had been the principal means of 

 creating. 



Let not the reader suppose that from the amount of 

 injury I received — it being nothing short of absolutely 

 depriving me of the means of subsistence — I was 

 inimical, or even indifferent, to the magnitude and 

 importance of the great work going on throughout the 

 country ; or that I considered that the interests of the few 

 should stand in the way of the many. 



I only wish to record the injustice done to a set of men 

 who, most certainly, had vested rights to the old method 

 of travelling — if the means of subsistence are considered 

 so — and in most, if not in all, other organic changes, those 

 vested rights have been acknowledged by the Legislature. 

 In the instance of the Municipal Reform Bill, compensa- 

 tion was OTanted to those leo-al officials who had held 

 appointments in some close corporation, or under some 

 distinguished nobleman or gentleman — patrons of the 

 borouo-h — and who were I'elieved from their arduous 

 duties by the will of the new constituencies. 



That the case of the one should not meet with the same 

 attention and the same result as the other, must be 

 attributed to the constitution of the Lower House. 

 Those whose duty it is to frame the law on such occasions, 



