Town Gentry.—On the other hand, the very high education and enlightenment of the gentry living in towns, their close contact with the interests and opinions of all the different sections of the community from the highest to the lowest, and their intelligence sharpened by constant and varied exercise in the school of the business world, enable them to entertain more extensive views and have wider sympathies than their brethren of the country. They perceive that their own progress and the progress of the country in general have always been due to radical changes in opinions and institutions, and they feel that changes must always be the only means of future progress. The gentry in towns, therefore, are in many cases liberals.
Trades-people.—There is still a distinction, which I cannot but call silly, which places even rich and successful merchants in a class lower than that occupied by the gentry. It is a complaint general among many of the gentry that merchants and tradespeople are following them too close and are treading on their heels, and allusion is sometimes made to those "good old times" when it was something to be born a gentleman! But the daily increasing enlightenment of England is fast closing up such silly distinctions, and every change in institutions leads to further equalization. This equalization is to the tradespeople a consummation devoutly to be wished for, and this class therefore is never averse to change. As a rule, therefore, the tradespeople are liberals and radicals.
Labouring Classes.—This is the only class of people in England utterly devoid of the blessings of education,
