and evasion should continue unchecked any longer, the proposed bill was cumbrous and defective, and its
rejection is not to be deplored. The sin of modern legislation is the want of simplicity. The object proposed
in this Audit bill was missed in the machinery for effecting it; and hence generally comes that grievous
scandal of the modern statute-book, which consists in its unending repetition of acts for the amendment of
other acts that had themselves amended previous amending enactments, and which threatens to make one
enormous pettifogging Nisi Prius of the laws of this lawyer-ridden country. From the opening of the session
to the middle of the present month, no less than a hundred and thirty-two bills had been under discussion in
the House of Commons, and not a few were measures of this kind.

Nor is it seldom that the bill amended would not be infinitely better without the bill amending it.
The last news from Ireland, for example, brings mention of a very important sale of encumbered estates
(in County Meath) realising upwards of sixty thousand pounds and an average of between eighteen and
nineteen years' purchase; yet, on the same page which thus records the continued success of that admirable
measure, we have also to mention a so-called improvement of it forced upon the Government by Lord
Westmeath, the effect of which, unless the House of Commons interfere, will be to prevent the future sale of a
certain class of estates for less than fifteen years' purchase. It was discussed amid such frantic complaints
of "confiscation" by the "encumbered" legislators of the Upper House, that Lord Carlisle had nothing for it
but to give way with signs of extreme reluctance. Meanwhile the terrible evil to which this measure is applying
the only sure (though a necessarily slow) remedy, has had one more illustration of a very appalling kind, in the
deliberate murder during open day, and almost within sight of the inhabitants of a country village in Armagh,
of a land-agent remarkable for his harshness to the poor, who had been concerned in extensive evictions, and
whose last act had been to refuse with a curse the prayer of a poor widow, offering him the last money
she could scrape together for a favour he set no store by, and was quite ready to give to any one but the
miserable wretch in want of it. It seems strange to have to mention, in the presence of such facts as these,
two attempts by Irish members of the House of Commons, the one to effect what would be tantamount to a
repeal of the poor law, and the other to render more swift and stringent the law of eviction. Both were
happily defeated; but the existence of such desires and aims on the part of the landlord representatives of
Ireland may help to account for the uncontrollable vehemence with which the question of what is called
tenant-right continues to be agitated throughout the country, notwithstanding extreme and very absurd
differences among its advocates as to what is really intended by the expression. The Parliamentary Franchise
bill still lingers in the Lords; and in the Commons the Vice-royalty Abolition bill makes such feeble
progress, in spite of a feeble opposition, that it seems doubtful if the present session will see it passed.
Alarming reports have prevailed as to the re-appearance of the potato blight; but, for the most part, these
would seem exaggerations, and already it is noticed that the blackening of leaves which had been mistaken
for the blight has yielded to the sunny warmth of the later days of the month. The promises of harvest
are everywhere abundant.

In England, too, where the weather has been sultry beyond precedent, the anticipations of harvest, the
state of the markets, and the last returns of exports and imports published by the Board of Trade, are of a
character by no means likely to furnish arguments for the restoration of protection. Yet the "farmer's
friends" have not been inactive; either in the country, where parson M'Neill, of Liverpool, came vainly to
the rescue of the Chowlers and the Butts; or in the House of Commons, where a band of philanthropical
free traders came as vainly to the help of the Stanleys and Disraelis, on a motion which, if successful,
would have protected free labour as against slave-labour in sugar and coffee. Not inaptly have the
protectionists had some small glance of comfort, however, to set off against their ill success, in the shape of a beer
report, from a committee of the House of Lords, proclaiming the scandalous mismanagement of many of the
free-trade beer-shops. But not a few of the conclusions come to in this report are confessedly exceptional,
and one or two statements of a different tendency ought to be coupled with our mention of them. One of
the witnesses examined, for instance, declared that he had begun the business eighteen years back with a
capital of a shilling, that he now drove a trade of some sixty barrels a month, that he attributed much of
his success to having never allowed swearing or smoking on his premises, and that he intends to retire from
business next year, and live in a part of the country "where there are no ill-conducted beer-houses." The same
witness protested that since Father Mathew visited London there had been more drinking than before he
came; and with characteristic plain-speaking, undeterred by any fear of seeming to speak with an interested
motive, Mr. Bouch added that there was a great deal of nonsense about the Reverend Father's preaching, for
that temperance was a good, but teetotalism an evil, to the constitution; seeing that temperate people will
drink a deal of beer, and "beer is very strengthening." We should add, in connexion with this subject,
that its agitation has led to a somewhat lively attack on the monopoly of the brewing interest—the potentates
of the vat, who are accused of setting at defiance the most elementary maxim of fair trade, by
refusing to adjust their selling prices to the reduced cost of their raw material. No matter what may be
the price of barley, they keep up the price of beer. A pot of porter or ale costs just as much, with
barley at twenty-two shillings, as when barley was fifty-five; and the difference which has brought down the
quartern loaf one half has made not the least difference to the autocrats of single and double X. Such is
the advantage of the wealthy brewer over the needy baker. The consumer of bread profits by his poor
tradesman, if the grower of corn does not; but neither the consumer of beer nor the grower of barley can
cope with the wealthy brewer. Free trade and abundance has taken five millions from the landlord, but
the brewer stops it in transitu and pockets it; for to him still, as in the days of Thrale and Johnson, the
boiler and vat are but another name for "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."
Nevertheless farmers' friends seem to be in no mind to agitate this question. They express themselves far
more interested in the doings of Mr. Ferrand.

Mr. Busfield Ferrand has started a notable scheme of a Farmer's Wool and Flax Association, of which the
object is to crush the factories of the Manchester spinners by erecting a spinning-wheel in every cottage!
Wool and flax are to be substituted for cotton; and the execrable trade which has made Manchester what it
is, by annually consigning a hundred thousand beings to hopeless bondage, and by directly occasioning a
thousand murders a-day (we quote the cautious description of the pious Standard, the organ of Lord Stanley's
government that is to be, and the trusted exponent of its opinions), is to be forthwith destroyed. But Mr.
Bright is apparently an obstinate man. He still thinks the article of cotton so likely to continue in request, that