Perhaps, however, our most valuable muniments repose in the Chapter-House of Westminster Abbey, a building still surrounded by the same facilities for fire as those which the late Charles Buller detailed to the House of Commons fourteen years ago. “Ever since 1732,” he said, “it had been reported to the House of Commons that there was a brewhouse and a washhouse at the back of the Chapter-House, where the Records were kept, and by which the Chapter-House was endangered by fire. In 1800, this brewhouse and this washhouse were again reported as dangerous. In 1819, this brewhouse and washhouse again attracted the serious notice of the Commissioners. In 1831, it was thought expedient to send a deputation to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and to request His Majesty’s Surveyor General to report upon the perils of this brewhouse and washhouse, and endeavour to get the Dean and Chapter to pull them down. But the Dean and Chapter asserted the vested rights of the Church, and no redress was obtained against the brewhouse and washhouse. In 1833, another expedition, headed by the Right Honourable Sir R. Inglis, was made to the Chapter-House; but the right honourable baronet, desiring not to come into collision with the Church, omitted all mention of the brewhouse and washhouse. And thus the attention of the Commissioners had been constantly directed to this eternal brewhouse and this eternal washhouse, without any avail. There they still remain, as a monument of the inefficiency of the Commissioners, and of the great power and pertinacity of the Church of this country.” The newspaper reports of this speech end with “Loud laughter from all parts of the House.”