Since the people have no benefit from a state education, and but a questionable benefit from a state church, how much is spent on their behalf? Here are tables which look as if they would tell something, though it requires more wit than mortal man has to make out accurately how the public accounts really stand. Among all the accommodations provided for the transaction of public business, one would think a pay- office might be fixed upon where all public claims should be discharged, in certain allotted departments; and, among all the servants of government, working men or sinecurists, one would think some might be employed in preparing such a document as has never yet been seen among us—an account of the actual annual expenditure of the public money. But one may make some approach to the truth in the gross:— “_The expenditure for the last year may be calculated, in round numbers, at upwards of fifty millions._” Upon my word, we are a gay nation! If we acted upon the belief held by some very wise persons, that the business of government might be conducted at a charge of one per cent. on the aggregate of individual revenue, this sum total would show us to be rich enough to buy Europe, and perhaps America to boot. This would give us a national wealth which it would be beyond Crœsus himself to form a notion of. But we are far enough from having ourselves governed so cheaply. Let us see how these fifty millions go:— “_To the Public Creditor_ £28,000,000 _Civil and Pension Lists_ 1,000,000 _Superannuated and Reduced Allowances of Civil £1,000,000 Departments_ _Do. of Military Ditto_ 4,300,000 _Miscellaneous Charges_ 200,000.”