NOTE 38, p. 182.—The facts do not justify this statement. At the time of the Peace of Paris, in September, 1815, the national debt of Great Britain was £900,436,845. In March of 1855 it had been diminished to £808,518,448, £91,918,397 having been paid off. The two years of the Crimean War increased the debt by £30,399,995. But since March, 1857, the decrease has been £82,541,924, leaving the debt March 31, 1883, £756,376,519, a diminution of £144,060,326 since 1815. By a law of 1875 provision was made for the gradual extinction of the debt by means of a sinking fund to be annually provided for in the budget. In 1883 a bill passed providing still further for a series of terminable annuities, by which, in the next twenty years, £173,000,000 will be paid.—Martin, “Statesman’s Year-Book, for 1884,” 230. NOTE 39, p. 186.—This is not quite accurately stated. At the time of the _coup d’état_ Lord Palmerston was Minister of Foreign Affairs. He did indeed in a conversation with Count Walewski, the French Ambassador at London, express his approval of the course of the French Government, but so far from speaking “ostensibly for the cabinet, for the sovereign, and the English nation,” he offered simply his private opinion. The English Government formally determined upon a course of the strictest neutrality; and when it was found that Palmerston’s approval had been sent by Walewski to France, the message was not only disavowed, but Palmerston was summarily dismissed. See McCarthy, ii., chap. xxii., 148–154, Eng. ed. The _coup d’état_ was in December, 1851; but there was no alliance till August of 1853, long after the people of France had given their sanction to the empire. NOTE 40, p. 192.—This hardly accords with what the orator said a few moments ago of India—“a vast country which we do not know how to govern.” The East India Company’s power was broken by the Sepoy rebellion, and the government was transferred to the crown in 1858. The government of Canada was made substantially what it now is, on the recommendation of Lord Durham, in 1839. NOTE 41, p. 195.—The aggregate number of paupers has changed but slightly during the last twenty years. In 1874 the total number in England and Wales was 829,281; in 1883, 799,296. But in Ireland the number has increased from 79,050 in 1874 to 115,684 in 1883. In Scotland the number has diminished from 111,996 in 1873, to 95,081 in 1882.—Martin, “Statesman’s Year-Book, for 1884,” 253, 257, 261.