"If they've guaranteed the payment, why don't they pay?" thought I; but still I couldn't get any money. At last I found the lawyers on both sides were quarrelling over the stamp-duties! Nobody knew, of the whole pack of them, whether this stamp or that was the right one! and my lawyers wouldn't give an eighty-pound stamp, and theirs wouldn't be content with a twenty-pound one. Now, you know, all this stamp business itself is merely Mr. Gladstone's [26] way of coming in for his share of the booty. I can't be allowed to sell my houses in peace, but Mr. Gladstone must have his three hundred pounds out of me, to feed his Woolwich infant with, and fire it off "with the most satisfactory result," "nothing damaged but the platform." I am content, if only he would come and say what he wants, and take it, and get out of my sight. But not to know what he does want! and to keep me from getting my money at all, while his lawyers are asking which is the right stamp? I think he had better be clear on that point next time. But here, at last, are six months come and gone, and the stamp question is--not settled, indeed, but I've undertaken to keep my man of business free of harm, if the stamps won't do; and so at last he says I'm to have my money; and I really believe, by the time this letter is out, Messrs. ---- will have paid me my 14,000l. Now you know I promised you the tenth of all I had, when free from incumbrances already existing on it. This first instalment of 14,000l. is not all clear, for I want part of it to found a Mastership of Drawing under the Art Professorship at Oxford; which I can't do rightly for less than 5,000l. But I'll count the sum left as 10,000l. instead of 9,000l., and that will be clear for our society, and so, you shall have a thousand pounds down, as the tenth of that, which will quit me, observe, of my pledge thus far. A thousand down, I say; but down where? Where can I put it to be safe for us? You will find presently, as others come in to help us, and we get something worth taking care of, that it becomes a very curious question indeed, where we can put our money to be safe! In the meantime, I've told my man of business to buy 1,000l. consols in the names of two men of honour; the names cannot yet be certain. What remains of the round thousand shall be kept to add to next instalment. And thus begins the fund, which I think we may advisably call the "St. George's" fund. And although the interest on consols is, as I told you before, only the taxation on the British peasant continued since the Napoleon wars, still this little portion of his labour, the interest on our St. George's fund, will at last be saved for him, and brought back to him. And now, if you will read over once again the end of my fifth letter, I will tell you a little more of what we are to do with this money, as it increases.