The Home Office has also been appointed
nurse to sickly turnpike trusts. The
turnpike-roads, since railways have carried
off much of their traffic, are no longer the great
traffic arteries they used to be. They were
and are maintained out of parish rates and
statute labour. Turnpike trusts are required
to make annual returns of their financial
state to the Home Office. They are now not
very flourishing; the state having hitherto
abstained from becoming answerable for any
money losses that the stone road has suffered
from the iron one.

We have said that there are certain minor
departments and administrations doing their
work apart from the Home Office, although
responsible to the Home Secretary. The
most responsible of these are the inspectors
of prisons, factories, and mines, and the
office of the Registrar-General.

Most of our prisons are maintained by the
counties or municipal towns to which they
belong; the state paying for the maintenance
of prisoners after conviction, and some part
of the expense of prosecutions. The counties
and towns, however, are subject to certain
laws regulating discipline, and
inspectors are appointed, each to a given
district, to see that these laws are carried into
effect, and to send to the Home Office reports
upon the prisons placed under their supervision.
In England there is a chief inspector,
who receives a salary of eight hundred, and
there are three others with seven hundred
pounds a-year, exclusive of travelling
expenses. All new prisons have to be built on
plans that have been approved by the
Surveyor-General of Prisons, whose establishment
costs about sixteen hundred pounds
a-year. Convicts, under sentence of long
imprisonment or transportation, are not
usually confined in town or county jails,
but in convict prisons, built and maintained
by the state under the control of a Home
Office Board, called the Board of Directors of
Convict Prisons, whereof the surveyor-general
just mentioned is the chairman. He has two
colleagues with salaries of seven and eight
hundred pounds, and the total cost of
the establishment, which also publishes
regular reports, is about five thousand a-year.

It being found that laws passed for the
protection of factory operatives were useless,
inspectors were appointed to see them carried
into execution. The staff consists of three
chief inspectors; each with a thousand a-year
for salary, four sub-inspectors at three hundred
and fifty pounds, and ten at three hundred.
The sub-inspectors are required to
reside in their respective districts. A General
Factory Inpectors' office is established in
London, at which the chief inspectors meet.
The whole cost of the department is not quite
eleven thousand pounds a-year. There is a
similar inspection maintained over mines and
collieries, at a cost of between four and five
thousand.

The registation of births, deaths, and marriages
throughout the kingdom, made by
district registrars, is collected, generalised,
and turned to excellent account, in the office
of the Registrar-General, who is partly subject
to the authority of the Home Office. Weekly
and monthly reports on the rates and causes
of mortality are published by his department,
and an annual general report on vital
statistics is also made by it and submitted to the
legislature. The cost of the whole department
is upwards of forty-five thousand pounds
a-year. A special grant is made for the cost
of the census,—the taking of which is, of course,
one of the duties of the Registration Office.

Connected with the Home Office, though
less directly subordinate to it than the departments,
last mentioned, are the Poor Law
Boards, the English Ecclesiastical, the Tithe,
the Enclosure, and the Copyhold Commissions.

The administration of the poor law is in the
hands of local boards of guardians. The central
board has only the task of supervision. It
consists of a president (who must be in
parliament), paid with two thousand a-year, and
a political secretary, with half that sum,—
these gentlemen being subordinate members
of the existing government, and changing
with it. A permanent secretary, with fifteen
hundred a-year, is the other member of the
board. Under the board, are two assistant
secretaries and ten inspectors, each paid with
seven hundred a-year, exclusive of his
travelling expenses. Every inspector has a clerk,
and keeps up constant correspondence with
the boards of guardians in his district. Thirty-
six thousand a-year is the cost of the Poor
Law Board, which, like all other boards,
makes annual reports to parliament. The
Irish Poor Law Board resembles the English,
but costs five thousand a-year more. In
Scotland there is no efficient poor law; and
the superintendence of what there is, costs
only four thousand a-year. The annual
expenditure upon the support of poor in this
kingdom—all being money paid out of local
rates—exceeds six millions sterling. One
million a-year wisely spent in the same way
for the furtherance of cleanliness a&d decency
and the suppression of disease, would surely
save three millions of poor-rates.

The Home Secretary is the official organ of
communication with the heads of the
Established Church: he watches all legislation on
ecclesiastical matters; and the Queen, as head
of the church, speaks through him. He is a
member of the English Ecclesiastical
Commission, which was established for the prudent
distribution, over the whole surface of the
church, of the surplus wealth accruing from
the property of certain episcopal sees and
cathedral establishments. There are two paid
commissioners: one who must be in parliament
is appointed by the Crown, and receives
two thousand a-year; the other is nominated
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and receives
one thousand a-year. Both salaries are charged