eloquent financier portrayed of paper-mills springing up all over the country,—when every hamlet was to have its little factory, engaging the surplus labour of the lads and lasses; and every glen that had a streamlet was to be made musical with the noise of a paper-mill? We have not heard of any such results—we have not heard of any extension at all of the manufacture; and as for Mr Gladstone’s arcadian dreams of paper-making, while foreign Governments act towards us in the way they do, he surely cannot possibly hope for their realisation—unless, indeed, he expects the whole country to go to rags under his financial mismanagement. The other basis upon which Mr Gladstone founds his reputation as a great financier, and as an ample compensation for his past annual deficits, is his reduction of the duties upon French wines. We readily admit that these wines have been poured into this country in greatly increased quantities during the last eighteen months; but will this continue? And what is the advantage we derive from the change? “Gladstone’s wines” has become a current name for these beverages, but it is certainly not a “household word.” Any one who confesses, with rueful face, that he has made acquaintance with these wines, never fails to explain that it was at another man’s table, or at some villanous restaurant’s,—never at his own. No decanter will circulate if its contents are known to have been favoured by the legislation of Mr Gladstone. People have become wary and suspicious at dinner-parties now; and a Paterfamilias may be heard giving the caution which old Squire Hazeldean gave to his son when about to dine with Dr Riccabocca, “Whatever you take, Frank, don’t touch his wines!” Those “cheap wines” have been tried—or, at least, if tried, have been condemned and discarded at every respectable dinner-table. They don’t suit the middle classes; that is an incontrovertible fact. We are not less sure they are equally ill suited to the tastes and requirements of the working-classes. They have hitherto been tried largely as a novelty; but they do not improve on acquaintance, even if we could forget the much better use which Mr Gladstone could have made of his opportunities. Depend upon it, Nature knows better than any Chancellor of the Exchequer how to provide for our bodily wants, and supplies the essential wants of each people from the products of their own country. Let our working-classes get good beer at its natural price, and it will be infinitely better for their health, and more to their taste, than giving them cheap foreign wines, whose thinness and acidity are not suited for our climate, and which cannot compete with beer as nourishers and supporters of the bodily strength. When we remember, on the one hand, that seven and a half millions sterling have been lost to the country in Mr Gladstone’s financial experiments; and, on the other, how much better would have been a reduction on the duties of tea, sugar, and