What a rich, stirring, happy-looking country this is before my eyes, where the people hold up their heads and smile,—very differently, I fancy, from what they did when the proud Cardinal made a progress through it, or when whispers of the sale of Dunkirk circulated in advance or in the rear of the sovereign who bartered away his people’s honour! How times are changed, when, instead of complaining that the King and his Ministers sacrifice the nation to their own pomps and vanities, the people only murmur at an insufficiency of courage and despatch in relieving them of the burdens imposed by the mal- administration of a former age! What a change, from being king-ridden, courtier-ridden, priest-ridden, minister-ridden, to being,—not king- ridden, less courtier-ridden, priest-ridden only while it is our pleasure to be so, and ruled by a ministry, every tittle of whose power hangs upon the breath of the people! One may bear even the debt, for a short space, with patience, while blessed with the sober certainty that the true instrument of rectification,—the responsibility of rulers to the ruled, is at length actually in our hands. One might almost wish long life to the sinecure pensioners, and be courteous about the three millions and a half consumed in tax collecting, if one rested in a comparison of the present with the past. But there is enough before one’s eyes to remind one how much remains to be done before the nation shall receive full justice at the hands of its guardians. By small savings in many quarters, or by one of the several decided retrenchments which are yet possible and imperative, some entire tax, with its cost of collection, might ere this have been spared, and many an individual and many a family who wanted but this one additional weight to crush them, might now have been standing erect in their independence. What a list of advertisements is here! Petitions for relief,—how piteous! Offers of lodging, of service, literary, commercial, and personal, how eager! What tribes of little governesses, professing to teach more than their young powers can possibly have achieved! What trains of servants, vehemently upholding their own honesty and accomplishments,—the married boasting of having got rid of their children to recommend themselves to their employers,—ay, even the mother advertising for sale the nourishment which God created for her first-born! There is no saying how much of all this is attributable to the weight of public burdens, or to the mode of their pressure: but it is enough that this craving for support co-exists with unnecessary public burdens. It is enough, were the craving aggravated a thousand-fold, and the needless burden extenuated to the smallest that could be estimated,—it is enough to prove that no worthless pensioner,—worthless to the nation at large,—should fill his snuff-box at the public charge, while a single tax-payer is distressed. For my part, I have no doubt that many of the cases in this long list of