and conducting inquiries before Committees
of the House of Commons—allowed on all
hands to be the very worst tribunals
conceivable by the mind of man? Has that
other Public any adequate idea of the corruption,
profusion, and waste, occasioned by
this process of misgovernment? Supposing
it were informed that, ten years ago, the
average Parliamentary and Law expenses of
all the then existing Railway Companies
amounted to a charge of seven hundred
pounds a mile on every mile of railway made
in the United Kingdom, would it be startled?
But, supposing it were told in the next breath,
that this charge was really not seven, but
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS A MILE, what
would that other Public (on whom, of course,
every farthing of it falls), say then ? Yet this
is the statement, in so many words and
figures, of a document issued by the Board of
Trade, and which is now rather scarce—as
well it may be, being a perilous curiosity.
That other Public may learn from the same
pages, that on the Law and Parliamentary
expenses of a certain Stone and Rugby Line,
the Bill for which was lost (and the Line
consequently not made after all), there was
expended the modest little preliminary total
of one hundred and forty-six thousand
pounds! That was in the joyful days when
counsel learned in Parliamentary Law,
refused briefs marked with one hundred guinea
fees, and accepted the same briefs marked
with one thousand guinea fees; the attorney
making the neat addition of a third cipher,
on the spot, with a presence of mind
suggestive of his own little bill against that
other Public (quite dissociated from us as
aforesaid), at whom our readers and we are
now bitterly smiling. That was also in the
blessed times when, there being no Public
Health Act, Whitechapel paid to the tutelary
deities, Law and Parliament, six thousand
five hundred pounds, to be graciously allowed
to pull down, for the public good, a dozen
odious streets inhabited by Vice and Fever.

Our Public know all about these things,
and our Public are not blind to their enormity.
It is that other Public, somewhere or
other—where can it be ?—which is always
getting itself humbugged and talked over.
It has been in a maze of doubt and
confusion, for the last three or four years, on
that vexed question, the Liberty of the
Press. It has been told by Noble Lords
that the said Liberty is vastly inconvenient.
No doubt it is. No doubt all
Liberty is—to some people. Light is highly
inconvenient to such as have their sufficient
reasons for preferring darkness; and soap
and water is observed to be a particular
inconvenience to those who would rather be
dirty than clean. But, that other Public finding
the Noble Lords much given to harping
betweenwhiles, in a sly dull way, on this
string, became uneasy about it, and wanted to
know what the harpers would have—wanted
to know, for instance, how they would direct
and guide this dangerous Press. Well, now
they may know. If that other Public will
ever learn, their instruction-book, very
lately published, is open before them. Chapter
one is a High Court of Justice; chapter two
is a history of personal adventure, whereof
they may hear more, perhaps, one of these
days. The Queen's Representative in a most
important part of the United Kingdom—a
thorough gentleman, and a man of
unimpeachable honour beyond all kind of doubt—
knows so little of this Press, that he is
seen in secret personal communication with
tainted and vile instruments which it rejects,
buying their praise with the public money,
overlooking their dirty work, and setting
them their disgraceful tasks. One of the great
national departments in Downing Street is
exhibited under strong suspicion of like ignorant
and disreputable dealing, to purchase
remote puffery among the most puff-ridden
people ever propagated on the face of this
earth. Our Public know this very well, and
have, of course, taken it thoroughly to heart, in
its many suggestive aspects; but, when will that
other Public—always lagging behindhand in
some out of the way place—become informed
about it, and consider it, and act upon it?

It is impossible to over-state the completeness
with which our Public have got to the
marrow of the true question arising out of
the condition of the British Army before
Sebastopol. Our Public know perfectly,
that, making every deduction for haste,
obstruction, and natural strength of feeling in
the midst of goading experiences, the
correspondence of THE TIMES has revealed a
confused heap of mismanagement,
imbecility, and disorder, under which the nation's
bravery lies crushed and withered. Our Public
is profoundly acquainted with the fact that
this is not a new kind of disclosure, but, that
similar defection and incapacity have
before prevailed at similar periods until the
labouring age has heaved up a man strong
enough to wrestle with the Misgovernment of
England and throw it on its back.
WELLINGTON and NELSON both did this, and the
next great General and Admiral—for whom
we now impatiently wait, but may wait some
time, content (if we can be) to know that
it is not the tendency of our service, by sea or
land, to help the greatest Merit to rise—must
do the same, and will assuredly do it, and by
that sign ye shall know them. Our Public
reflecting deeply on these materials for
cogitation, will henceforth hold fast by the
truth, that the system of administering their
affairs is innately bad; that classes and
families and interests, have brought them to a
very low pass; that the intelligence,
steadfastness, foresight, and wonderful power of
resource, which in private undertakings
distinguish England from all other countries,
have no vitality in its public business; that
while every merchant and trader has