upon by the Treasury as the real warrant for adopting their recommendation. Nor, on the other hand, is it refining too much to say that the _ex officio_ trusteeship of the heads of the financial department of the Government, not only annihilates the responsibility of the trustees, but prevents the due exercise of the control which that department ought to have over their proceedings.”... “If the trustees were to be superseded in a matter of such importance, they surely ought to have been consulted, not only as to the manner in which they might, with the greatest advantage, avail themselves of professional assistance, but as to the class of persons who were to afford it. But no discretion was left to them; and who, let me ask, were the ‘eminent judges’ fixed upon by the Treasury? Will it be believed that not only the class of persons, but the very individuals chosen to give an opinion, on which the purchase of pictures was to depend, were those who were in the habit of offering, and _actually at the time were offering pictures to the trustees for sale_? At the very meeting (held February 2, 1846) at which the communication from the Treasury was read, I find the trustees considering a proposal for the sale of a collection of pictures by _Mr Woodburn_, one of the judges nominated by the Treasury. At the next meeting (held March 2, 1846), I find that “the trustees _again_ took into consideration the offer of a picture, by Spagnoletti, for sale by _Mr Farrer_,” the other “eminent judge” recommended by the Treasury. So that, in fact, the “eminent judges” were by turns competitors for the patronage of the trustees, and by turns sat in judgment on one another’s wares.”