Again, the Vicar of Hallowell, in Northamptonshire, Mr. Burgess, has
written an address to his parishioners on the subject of the Elections which seems to us a perfect model. of earnest and temperate counsel, though we do not say that the Clergy are bound to abstain so completely as Mr. Burgess does from expressing their own deep convictions on the issues at stake. But no doubt Mr. Burgess urges, and urges most effectively, the first great duty of the electors,—to regard their political respon- sibility as a great and sacred one, to give their votes not lightly, but as men responsible to God for their exercise of this great trust on which the future of so great an Empire in part depends. Let us add that there are certainly circumstances under which the refusal to vote at all would be quite as sacred a duty as, under other circumstances, the recording of the vote would be.
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