increase in the strength of the free-trade party, and the debate a great decrease even in the confidence of
then opponents. Mr. Disraeli not only disapproved of the motion, for which nevertheless he thought
himself bound to vote, but openly repudiated monopoly in favour of reciprocity, declared that his quarrel
was not with low prices at home but with high duties abroad, and denounced protection for the benefit
of a class as little better than plunder. If the "horses and me" should ever turn out, therefore, as
Mr. Chowler promised at the Crown and Anchor, it seems probable that the leadership on the occasion, with
whatever "punches on the head" may be contingent, will fall to Mr. Grantley Berkeley rather than to Mr.
Benjamin Disraeli.

Objecting thus strongly to the benefit of a class as the basis of legislation, Mr. Disraeli had not scrupled,
however, a few evenings before, on the occasion of Mr. Henley's proposition for a reduction of official
salaries and wages, to argue in effect that because wheat had sunk to below forty shillings a quarter, the
wages of public servants should be reduced in the same proportion. But the result of the debate very
clearly showed that erroneous notions prevail generally as to the remuneration given in the public offices;
and that, whatever may be the conclusions arrived at by the committee now sitting to hear evidence as to
the higher official, judicial, and diplomatic salaries, the salaries of the working classes of public servants are
more decidedly under than above the mark of the duties, and of the probity and ability evinced in their
discharge. On this ground Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Roebuck met in perfect agreement, and some of the stoutest
financial reformers voted against the proposition; though on the other hand, Mr. George Hudson, who had
formerly tried the experiment of an indiscriminate reduction of wages (to "make things pleasant") on his various
lines of railways, gave the benefit of his experience and support to Mr. Henley. But quite apart from this
question of "wages" (which has really a very confined range), is that of the general cost of what are called the
Civil Services, on the actual condition of which the appearance of the annual estimates throws timely and
curious light. Here we at once perceive that steady and progressive reductions are undeniably at work in
the salaries and expenses of public departments; but less cause for congratulation presents itself in the
items of increase in other directions. The expenditure upon crime is fifty-five thousand pounds more
than it was two years ago; and the money required for public buildings exceeds what was asked for, last
year, by nearly ninety thousand. In other words, while our prison and convict administration is in the
least possible satisfactory state, the country is paying two thousand pounds a day for it; and we are asked
to contribute forty-five thousand pounds more than was voted last year to the building of the Palace of
Westminster, within the same month in which we hear of the House of Commons having been actually built
so small that it will not accommodate its members! Crime, for the most part the result of ignorance,
costs us seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year; and for the removal of ignorance we are asked to
give something less than a hundred and fifty thousand. The cost of the single convict establishment at Van
Dieman's Land is larger than the whole national expenditure for the purposes of public education; and the
entire sum that we pay, not alone for the extension of education, but also for the encouragement of science
and art (government being here kept fully in countenance by ultra-liberal House of Commons majorities who
think it decent to refuse a thousand pounds for three pictures by Mr. Edwin Landseer), is decidedly less
than the solitary charge for keeping up that anti-slave trade squadron on the Coast of Africa, of which the
principal effect is to exaggerate the horrors of slave traffic. The last item claiming notice is an increase
of nearly twenty thousand pounds upon last year's estimate of Colonial and other Foreign services; and this
may recal us to the legislative labours of the month, and the third reading of the Australian bill.

Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Molesworth have been the principal opponents of this measure, and they
continued their hostility to the last. Yet it is to be hoped that it may receive no material damage in the
Upper House, for, though it has unquestionable defects, it is a vast improvement upon the existing system,
and offers stronger inducements than have yet existed to that higher kind of emigration which has long been
desirable, and is now become essential. It has provoked opposition chiefly because it does not abolish the
imperial veto, and because it does not give double legislatures to each of the colonies; but it secures absolute
self-government to the colonists in all local affairs, and it leaves the mother country only so much general
power as may be justly claimed in right of her connection and concessions, and exercised with advantage to
the colonies themselves. Mr. Gladstone made an attempt to graft upon the bill a sort of legislative Convocation
for the church independent of the local legislature; a convocation which would have been constituted of
the laity as well as clergy, and so far inviting support from the more liberal of the church parties; but
containing provisions too plainly indicating the intention of the mover not to render its defeat desirable. One of
the clauses practically nullified the lay element in the proposed ecclesiastical legislature, by making the assent
of the Australian bishops essential to the efficacy of the acts of convocation; and judging from the results of
episcopal administration in our old world, it would have been hard to deliver over our new to the like
tender mercies. In the month of which we present this record, the existence of an ecclesiastical sinecure of
fifteen thousand a year, and its appropriation by the English primate for the benefit of his son, have startled
economical as well as religious people not a little. Nor has the shock been greatly abated by the primate's
explanation that he had presented his son with express submission to the power existing under a recent act, of
lowering the salary and increasing the duty, if the legislature should be so inclined; or by the Bishop of
London's palliation of the enormity by the greater enormity of an episcopal predecessor, who had appointed
a son of six months old to a similar office, and so secured him its enjoyment for full seventy years! It is
the disclosure of facts of this nature which has given personal bitterness to the discussions on the still
pending Ecclesiastical Commission bill; and which indisposes the most easy and tolerant of church-goers to
listen, with any sort of patience, to such further discoveries as that a million and a half of personal property
has been left by the twenty-six bishops deceased during the last twenty years. It is a little comfort, in
connection with so painful a subject, to have to record the final success in the House of Commons of the Manchester
Rectory Division bill. The object of this most just and necessary measure is to apportion some forty thousand
a-year of church property existing in Manchester, to the spiritual wants of four hundred thousand
Christian souls also existing there; instead of devoting it to the comfortable maintenance of half-a-dozen
church sinecurists, who openly profess themselves neither obliged nor disposed to discharge any clerical
functions. Yet a minority of sixty members were found to oppose the third reading, headed by the members
for both Universities! To the accomplishment of this act of justice we have to set off an unsuccessful
attempt by Mr. Hume to abolish pluralities; but the attempt at least facilitated a less energetic move in the