immediate relief from taxation, and it was only after a hard struggle, and two defeats, that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer reversed that decision.

These things are not without their use, however, in clearing the way for a correction of the present reform
bill; which, judging by the tone taken on a motion to equalise the franchise in counties and boroughs by
giving the right of voting in the former to occupiers of tenements of the annual value of ten pounds, cannot
be far distant. The chief ministerial objection taken to a proposition so reasonable as that of thus giving the
franchise to men of property and intelligence in country-places who happen to be independent of the landlords,
was its having been made too late in the session for a practical result; but the House of Lords had
found it meanwhile not too late to send the Irish Franchise bill back to the Commons so mutilated in its best
provisions that the measure will have in all probability to be rejected, unless the compromise of a rating less
than fifteen pounds can be come to, and the righteous as well as needful clause restored by which a man
might be placed on the register when really entitled to the franchise, without the necessity of any further effort.
In conclusive proof of the fairness of the eight pound rate, so scornfully rejected by the Upper House, it
has been shown that of the three hundred and twenty-one cases of process served for rent in the transaction
which led to Mr. Mauleverer's murder, there were only three tenants whom the proposed rate would have
enfranchised; yet the men who now reject that rate do so with affected protestations of a desire to see both
countries equal! But, unconsciously, one of the same party in the Lower House, not many days after, gave
a whimsical proof that the sort of eqviality desired is one that should not make Ireland better, but England
worse. He complained that if comparison were made of the proportion of bishops and clergy in the Church of
Ireland (even deducting Lord Stanley's ten abolished bishops) with the like proportion in the Church of
England, the remarkable fact would become apparent that in order to place the two countries on an equal footing
the number of bishops in the English Church must be raised to a hundred and seven! This was in the
debate on the Ecclesiastical Commission bill; and the speaker appeared to be quite ignorant that while thus
exhibiting the episcopal enjoyments of a Roman Catholic country, he was also displaying the monstrous
injustice of overlaying it with a Protestant establishment. The discussions on this bill, and the propositions
of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert, respectively, to create a supplementaiy bench of suffragan bishops and
to re-organise and re-vivify cathedral establishments, have been chiefly curious for their proof of the weakness
of the church party (if it may be called so) in parliament which talks so big out of doors. But that even
the out-of-door talking portends very little, was made manifest in a recent gathering of some fifteen hundred
agitators against the Gorham decision, when, out of all the blustering protests and denunciations indulged, the
only positive object declared essential was the re-animation of Church Synods long defunct, and certain to be
never again inflicted on the English people! One declaration was indeed made, to the effect that the clergy
must be prepared, if need were, to give up their emoluments, and the laity must be prepared, if need were,
for increased self-denial to make up the deficiency; but this proposition for an English Free Church fell
from a layman, and none of the clerical agitators seconded it in the least. Its establishment, therefore,
will doubtless be postponed ad Græcas Kalendas; or, as the Bishop of Exeter has quite as clearly expressed it
in his final appeal against the institution of Mr. Gorham, "to the sacred Synod of this nation when it shall
be in the name of Christ assembled as the true Church of England by representation." This, we do not
doubt, wll be the exact date of the bishop's surrender of his benefice, and of the institution of the Free Kirk
of England.

Meanwhile the collegiate chapter of Manchester have been compelled more promptly to surrender their
gross and glaring mal-appropriation of ecclesiastical wealth, by an excellent act of parliament formerly
described in this Narrative, and of which the success may encourage other reformers throughout the kingdom,
more bent than Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr. Gladstone on the real reform of church abuses, to expose and
correct the enormous abuses existing in cathedral corporations. The Manchester Rectory Division bill has
been more successful than other measures which had as hard a struggle in both houses. The County
Courts bill, for example, after escaping the shoals and quicksands of a committee in the House of Lords,
and weathering the more open danger of some half-dozen amendments, and coming out in a not much
more mutilated state than Sir John Jervis had already reduced it to in the Commons, received a sudden
side-blow at the third reading from Lord Brougham, which, seconded heartily by the new Lord Chancellor,
fairly knocked out all the little breath that remained in its body, and left it so many empty words. Lord
Brougham carried an amendment giving a concurrent jurisdiction to the superior courts in actions for sums
above twenty pounds. This practically makes the attorney arbiter in the action; and how many attorneys
will be satisfied with two pounds costs in a lower court, when to go into an upper court will secure fifteen!
The bill is substantially defeated; and might as well have been at once consigned to that limbo of dropped
or defeated measures which during the last month has received the Jewish Relief bill, the Irish Vice-Royalty
Abolition bill, the Railway Audit and Woods and Forests bills, the Merchant Seamen's Fund bill, the Irish
Landlord and Tenant bill, and (more to be deplored than any of the rest) the Security for Advances bill.

The delay of the latter measure, which would greatly have assisted the operation of the Irish Encumbered
Estates act by facilitating the advance of money on landed securities, is of evil omen for Ireland; and rumours
of the probable partial failure of the harvest and potato crops have added to the gloom prevailing there.
Even in England we have a less favourable report in this respect than prevailed last month; though there
appears to be a certainty of average crops, and still the possibility of abundant ones, while of the general
good condition of the country and its prospects there exists ample and most favourable testimony. Whether
tested by the quarterly returns of the Revenue, by the monthly reports of the Board of Trade, by the
stock of bullion in the Bank, by the apparent overflow of capital in all directions, or by the more humble
but not less satisfactory details of the second annual Poor Law report which has been lately issued, we have
the same happy and uniform results. Greater abundance of food and employment has decreased the number
of able-bodied adults receiving in-door and out-door relief by nearly thirty-two thousand beneath the returns of
last year. The increase in the whole income of the year over that of its predecessor is not far short of a million
and a quarter. And comparing the exports of the month of May with those of the same month in even the railway
years of exaggerated and unreal prosperity, we have the prodigious increase of something more than a third.
Perceiving such results from free trade, it may well be matter of congratulation that the result of the debate
on Lord Palmerston's foreign policy should have secured the continuance of a free trade government by a
sufficiently decisive majority; and Mr. Ferrand's continued denunciations of the "blood-stained serpents" of