profession. It is cheap to the country precisely because it is costly to the aristocracy.

To a great extent, though to a less extent, the same may be said of the navy. It is officered, mainly though not exclusively, from the governing classes. The officers, however, though they do not purchase their commissions, are often unable to live upon their pay. Some post-captains, when offered a ship, have been obliged to decline because unable to incur the expense of outfit. They are commissioned for three years: the first year is a heavy loss; the second they just clear themselves; the third they make a handsome profit. As a rule, it may be said,—at least so we are assured by those who have had long and rather fortunate experience,-only in three grades can the naval profession be said to be a profitable one-that of first lieutenant, captain of a flag-ship, and admiral in special positions. Both in the army and navy, then, the country is served to a considerable extent gratuitously by those whom Mr. Bright holds up to odium as growing rich upon its spoils.

As to the rest of the expenditure of which the navy estimates consists, it suffices to glance over the items to see how small a portion can in any way profit the aristocracy or gentry. Out of a total of nine millions we find the following items:

Let us now cast a glance at the "miscellaneous civil services." In these the apparent increase since 1835 has been nearly 5,000,000l.; but of this 1,500,000l. is attributable to a mere matter of account, a transfer from the consolidated fund. Let us see how the increase has arisen, and for whose behoof it has been spent.

Class I., Public Works and Buildings, has increased 600,000%. Of this sum 180,000l. is for royal palaces and parks, &c. (100,000l. being for parks and pleasure-grounds, which in 1835 was paid out of the crown-land revenue); 160,000l. for the new Houses of Parliament; and 170,000l. for harbours of refuge. It will be difficult for Mr. Bright to say which of these items of expense has been incurred for the sake of finding places or salaries for the aristocracy.

Class II. Salaries and Expenses of Public Departments. Wherever a change has taken place in the salaries of the chief

officers of state since 1835, that change has been a reduction. The numbers of employés has in many cases increased, but never more, and sometimes less, than the increased work of the department rendered necessary. Nevertheless, the aggregate increase under this head has been nearly 900,000l. 325,000l. of this, however, turns out to be for expenses formerly paid out of the land revenue, and is therefore only a transfer; 205,000%. is for printing and stationery,-which, extravagant as it may be, has certainly not gone into the pockets of the aristocracy; 150,000l. has gone in aid of the poor-rates; inspectors of factories, appointed to protect the poor, not to employ the rich, figure for 16,000l.; while the increased cost of all the great public departments together, in the course of twenty-four years, is only 110,000l., an augmentation which has barely kept pace with the requirements of the public service.

Class III., Law and Justice, shows an increase of nearly two millions; but no one will grudge this, and assuredly public money has seldom been so well spent, or so purely for the benefit of the general tax-paying public. Who profit by the countycourts, which figure for 157,000l. of the increase? Are the aristocracy employed or paid in the metropolitan police, which costs the state 128,000l.? or in the county and borough police, which is subsidised to the extent of 214,000l.? or in the Irish constabulary, which figures for 664,000l. of the increase? Convict establishments at home and abroad cost 400,000l. more than they used to do. But who would desire to curtail any of these expenses? or would deny that the country derives a full equivalent for them? or will pretend that they are incurred for the sake of the governing classes, or are specially profitable to them?

Class IV., Education, Science, and Art, shows an increase of nearly one million, of which 800,000l. has been spent in grants for the education of the poorer classes, and is the money which has always been voted with the most alacrity, and with the most sincere and disinterested benevolence.

Class V. Colonial and Consular Service. Under this head there has been no increase, but a diminution of 60,000l. Yet this is precisely the department in which jobs might be most easily perpetrated by a corrupt or wasteful government.

Class VI., Superannuations and Charities, shows an augmentation of 80,000l. The superannuations and retired allowances are and have long been regulated by a fixed scale, calculated with reference to the salaries of the officers receiving them, and are liable to no imputation of favouritism or unfairness. They are, in fact, a portion of the payment due for ser

vices rendered by men now past work. The sums expended on charities need no comment.

Class VII., Special and Temporary Services, consists of 158 items, and varies from year to year. In 1858 it was 400,0007. more than in 1835; in 1851 it was 70,000l. less. In 1858 Westminster Bridge figured for 110,000l., and dues under reciprocity treaties for 50,000l. It affords no support whatever to Mr. Bright's allegations.

The result of the whole inquiry, then, may be summed up thus. First, the whole of the increased national outlay, which this unscrupulous tribune of the people charges the ruling classes with having promoted for their own selfish purposes and expended for their own pecuniary good, was urged upon those classes by the people themselves; secondly, it has been spent almost entirely among the people themselves, for their employment, relief, behoof, protection, or instruction;-thirdly, so far as the aristocracy have pocketed any portion of it, that portion (at all events where the army and navy are concerned) has not nearly repaid them, even on a most moderate scale of payment, for the services demanded in return. Whether all this expenditure was wisely incurred, or has been skilfully or economically laid out, are very different questions, with which we have here no concern, and on which we offer no opinion. If there has been folly, that folly was the people's; if there has been extravagance and waste, the proceeds have been pocketed by tradespeople and workmen, not by lords or gentlemen. Now Mr. Bright may have been ignorant of these things-though it is a difficult stretch of charity to believe it, for the facts and the documents we quote have been long before him; but if so, his ignorance must have been conscious and wilful; and to remain thus ignorant on a subject on which he speaks habitually and intemperately, is only one degree less guilty than deliberate falsehood.

Not content with charging the governing classes with the crime of habitually increasing the taxes in order that they may live upon them, Mr. Bright proceeds to accuse them of the further base and dishonest practice of systematically employing the power which the constitution gives them to shift the pressure of taxation from their own shoulders to those of the unrepresented classes. He repeats this accusation so constantly and on such various occasions as to show that he thinks it to be the most sustainable, and knows it to be the most telling of all his allegations. In his speech at Manchester (Dec. 10th, 1858), he says: "They give to property vast influence in the government of the country, and they perpetually shield property from its fair

burden of taxation." In September 1859, he speaks thus at Huddersfield:

"This year it will be 70,000,000l. in taxes. Of this 70,000,000%. you would suppose that in a country like this, where there is such enormous wealth, where land and houses, taking the whole area of the country, fetch a far higher price than they do in any other part of the world,-you would suppose that the privileged class, the propertied class, would be likely to pay a fair share of the public burdens; but if you come to look at the mode in which these taxes are raised, you will find that probably there is not fifteen out of the seventy millions, and I am sure there is not twenty, or any thing near it-which is raised directly from property of any kind; that the great bulk of the taxes are levied upon articles which are consumed by all the people of the country, and that every working man, with good employment at fair wages, and with a moderate amount of comfort, pays a very much larger percentage upon his income than, I believe, do any of the richer or more powerful population of the kingdom."

The following is the language of his celebrated Birmingham letter (Oct. 1859), already quoted,-written (by the way) to denounce the income-tax, which he has since assisted to preserve and increase :—

"The whole taxation of the country last year exceeded sixty-five millions sterling. Of this vast sum, not ten millions were raised by taxes affecting only the possessors of the visible property of the country. The customs and excise alone raised more than forty-two millions, collected on articles the great bulk of which is consumed by that portion of the population which has no property but its labour, and no income but its wages, and which, as might be expected, from the facts just stated, has no voice in Parliament, and is wholly without representation in the government of the country. There is something essentially mean and singularly cruel in the manner in which the taxation of this country has been and is still levied. Our rich class is the richest in Europe; the administration of the country is in its hands; and a greater proportion of the heaviest taxation in the world is thrown upon the class possessing no property but its labour and wages than is the case in any other country with whose system of taxation we are acquainted."

The same assertions were repeated, though in a somewhat modified form, and with some attempt at justification, in the celebrated speech at Liverpool, December 1859.

To these accusations we oppose the following well-known facts. First, So far from the power of the represented classes being used to shift taxation from themselves and place it on the unrepresented, the whole of our fiscal policy since 1842 has been signally, and almost without exception, in the opposite direction. Ten millions of customs and excise duties have been taken off; the reduction has been made chiefly on those taxes

which pressed principally on the poor man or interfered with the trade by which he was to be employed, so that the exported products of his industry have doubled since that time; the cornlaws (which Mr. Bright used to declare cost the poorer classes ten millions a year) have been repealed; every actual necessary of life is admitted free of duty;-and, in order to enable all these reductions for the relief of the poor to be carried out, the governing classes submitted to the imposition, retention, and augmentation of the income-tax-a tax striking them alone, and striking them to an amount varying from five to sixteen millions per annum. All this Mr. Bright knows as well as we do, and knew it when he made the statement we have quoted; nor do we apprehend he will pretend to deny it. Secondly, Out of 76,000,000l. of taxes levied in 1858,* 25,000,000l. was direct taxation, of which the unrepresented classes paid only one million; 33,000,000l. was raised by imposts (poor-rates, countyrates, assessed-taxes, 201. house-tax, probate and succession duties, stamps, &c.), of which the governing, or at least the represented, classes paid 97 per cent; while of the customs and excise duties, amounting in all to nearly 43,000,000l., the propertied or represented classes, who are one-fourth of the community, pay about 19,350,000l., and the working or unrepresented classes, whom Mr. Bright calculates to be three-fourths, pay 23,400,000l. Thirdly, While admitting that all such calculations must be to a great extent conjectural, we may state that the fairest and most careful data that can be collected show that the workman pays not, as Mr. Bright alleges, a much larger, but a much smaller proportion of his income in taxation than the man of property; the latter contributing sixteen per cent, and the former only eleven per cent. This last estimate Mr. Bright may probably enough dispute, but the preceding figures he can neither impugn nor plead ignorance of.

Whenever any portion of the operatives is suffering under temporary distress from local causes or commercial crises, Mr. Bright is fond of preaching to them emigration to a lightly-*Namely, 61,000,000l. of imperial, and 15,000,000l. of local taxation.

We presume Mr. Bright does not reckon the Post-office revenue as a tax, nor the Crown-lands and miscellaneous receipts from the sale of old stores.

These figures are taken from an elaborate article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review, compiled evidently with great care and from the most authentic

sources.