the corporation, at the cost of the small
charitable trust:—Eighteen breakfasts at
three shillings, with extra, two tongues, eggs,
bacon, and Bath chap. Sixteen sandwiches,
twelve lemonades, six punch, one and a half
pints cherry-brandy, two and a half dozen
soda, lemon, sugar. Four dishes of flounders,
two ditto turbots, three ditto stewed eels,
two ditto mullet, three ditto water-souchie,
three ditto fried eels, three ditto eels tomatoes,
two ditto salmon, one ditto spiced eels, two
ditto collops of turbot, one ditto sturgeon,
white-bait, potatoes, cucumbers, sauces. Two
dishes boiled pullets and white sauce, two
ditto ducklings, two ditto raised pies, two
ditto hams, one dish of roast turkey poult,
one ditto pigeon pie, two ditto geese, one
ditto tongue, one ditto quarter of lamb, one
ditto roast fowls, one capon. One baron of
beef, two dishes of lamb cutlets, curry with
rice, asparagus, peas, ditto stewed, Italian
salads, prawns, rice, new potatoes, French
beans, cauliflowers, lobster, cucumber,
mushrooms, collar, garden beans, sauces and
gravies, jellies, baskets, tarts, blancmange,
custards, tourts, lemon pudding, plum
puddings. Six quarts ice creams, two almond
cakes, six pounds hot-house grapes, ten plates
strawberries, six ditto oranges, six ditto
almonds and raisins, four ditto preserved
ginger, four ditto preserved nutmegs, four
ditto biscuits, seven ditto olives, two dishes
apples. That is what these eighteen gentlemen
ate out of the charity in the name of
inspecting, and they drank forty-one bottles of
wine, taking from the charity, however, only
a toll of one shilling on each bottle. The
city companies, who thus enjoyed their work
as good Samaritans, opposed with all their
might a legislative measure that would make
them answerable for their fulfilment of trusts
before any authority more come-at-able than
Chancery. " I appeal," said Lord Lyndhurst,
on behalf of the bill which the assembled
Lords had passed in the preceding year; "I
appeal not to your compassion in favour of
individuals, but to your sense of justice—a
principle which has always been revered and
considered sacred in this house. I call on
your lordships by the love of justice, and on
principles of humanity, to allow this bill to
be read a second time, in order that its merits
and details may be fairly discussed and
considered in committee.... I shall indeed feel
most mortified—I shall feel, I declare, most
ashamed—if your lordships do not allow this
bill to be read a second time." They did not.
There happened to be just then a prime
minister whom it was desirable to damage
without turning him out, the companies
therefore, for that year, carried the day by a
majority of two.

In the next year, and the next year, and
the next, three successive, and certainly most
inadequate, attempts made by Lord Cottenham
to deal with this—as an unenlightened
member of the public might think altogether—
simple question, failed. It was then
considered best to appoint another commission,
and to have some more reports. The new
commission began work therefore in the
year eighteen hundred and forty-nine, and
speedily reported that the administration
of charitable trusts throughout the country
required some supervision, and suggested
certain provisions, which should be
incorporated in a statute. In pursuance of this
recommendation, a bill was introduced
in the year eighteen hundred and fifty,
which went through the House of Commons,
but was too late for the House of Lords. In
the following year, therefore, the bill went
through the House of Lords, but was too late
for the House of Commons. And again, in
the year following that, it met with like
misfortune.

Thus we have accounted for the wisdom of
Parliament upon this matter from the
year eighteen hundred and eighteen—
when it was introduced for legislation by
Lord Brougham, who has laboured annually,
through all misadventures, to obtain for it a
settlement from that remote year—to the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-three. For
five-and-thirty years—about the usual period
of incubation—Parliament had been sitting
upon the egg. At length the shell broke and
out came "the Charitable Trusts Act, 1853."
A large chick, but with the merest rudiments
of legs and wings. An act of eight-and-sixty
sections over which the vested interests had
been extremely watchful during the discussion
in committee, and out of which they had
struck every clause that could enable it really
to do the work it was especially created for.

No practical result followed from the passing
of this Act, for none was possible. In less
than a year afterwards (when money was
voted for the purposes of the commission) a
member of Parliament observed, that if the
powers of the commissioners were really so
limited as they were said to be, "it would be
better at once to say to the public, it is
impossible for us to interfere with the administration
of the Court of Chancery, and therefore
you are left in the same difficulties in
which you have been placed ever since the
report of the original charity commissioners,"
To which the home secretary replied, that the
zeal of the new commissioners had been all
that was to be desired, '' but at the same time
he must admit that the commissioners
themselves felt that their powers were quite
inadequate to the discharge of the duties which
were expected from them." The Act, in
short, though at length passed, was so passed
that it would not work. A little
experience of its defects would point the way
to their amendment; and, said the home
secretary, "no doubt a measure having this
object would be laid before the house next
session."

Next session, accordingly,—that is to say,
about a twelvemonth since—the British