Edinburgh is, in my mind, the best existing evidence of the baneful effects of centralisation. She never was, and in all probability never will become, a seat of commerce or manufacture; and perhaps it is better so, for I hardly think that her noble aspect would be beautified by the addition of some hundred chimney stacks, on the model of the St. Rollox column, vomiting out long streams of smoke across the surface of the clear blue sky. She is no longer a seat of government. Even had it been intended, as some still maintain, that, after the incorporating Union, a shadow of local government should be left to Scotland, subsequent events and mighty uncontemplated changes have arisen to render such a view untenable. But then, until some thirty years ago, Edinburgh had many privileges. The whole public business of the country was transacted by native functionaries residing within her walls. She had her boards of Custom and Excise. The high officers of the law all resided there, and she still was able to maintain something of the semblance of a metropolis. But the besom of reform, nowhere else so ruthlessly and cruelly wielded, swept every cranny and corner of her clean. Under the pretext of economy, all the local boards were suppressed and transferred to London, amidst the insane joy of our primitive native reformers, who do not seem for one moment to have reflected on the fatal consequences which were sure to follow. The courts of law, and all that remained to us of the ancient Scottish constitution were next assailed. In vain did Sir Walter Scott and others, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, demonstrate the impolicy of measures which must have the effect of degrading the status of the bar by narrowing its prospects, and of impoverishing the bulk of the citizens of Edinburgh by materially diminishing the income which had hitherto been expended amongst them. Such warnings were regarded as the drivellings of a senile intellect. Year after year the work of abolition went on. Some offices were suppressed, others grievously curtailed; and in several departments, where the fees of office were retained, these were ordered to be transmitted, and are so at the present moment, to the general account of the Treasury, in which they figure under the item of Miscellaneous Revenue;--so that the public purse of Great Britain is now augmented by the balance of the fees which were originally intended for the maintenance and support of the high officers of the Scottish crown.