It is all very well for people unacquainted with the machinery of these offices to talk about the idleness of Government clerks generally; and joke at the threadbare subject of "her Majesty's hard bargains." No doubt, some places are sinecures, and that a larger number of clerks are employed in many offices than there is work for them to do; but, we must not go altogether to the foot of the ladder to remedy this state of things! Why do not such ardent reformers as Mr Childers, and men of his stamp, cut down their own salaries first, before they set about pruning those of poor ill-paid subordinates? I can tell them, for their private satisfaction, that, if they did so, the onlooking public would have a much stronger belief in the honesty of their reformatory zeal than it at present possesses! It is not the "little men" that swell the civil list, as the vicar told me before I saw it for myself, but, the "big wigs." These are the ones who fatten on the estimates, the root of the evil lying concealed under the snugly-cushioned fauteuils of cabinet ministers and their pampered placeholders and hunters--not, beneath the straight-backed horsehair chairs of miserable clerks. It is unmanly thus for giants to gird at pigmies! I would advise all the clerks in the various Government offices to form a "union," in order to obtain redress for their wrongs; and to "strike," if needs be--you know, that strikes are all the rage now! You demur to my argument? It would be a conspiracy, you say? Dear me! You are quite wrong, I assure you. A conspiracy is only a conspiracy so long as it is unsuccessful. When it is triumphant, it is known no longer by that term! Then, it is styled a "Revolution," or a "Restoration," or a "Grand Party Triumph," as the case may be. Just in the same way, is a man a "traitor," or a "patriot," who tries to serve his country, according to his lights, as he is either defeated in his purpose, or victorious. Besides, when men thus work together in a body, their words and deeds, although identically the same, are regarded in a different light to the words and deeds of mere individuals. In the one case they may be grand and glorious; in the other, they are stigmatised, perhaps, as insignificant, and, indeed, often criminal. Witness, how a robber on a large scale, such as a privateersman confiscating the goods of an innocent merchant, or a chancellor of the exchequer putting his hand into a poor taxpayer's pocket, is held up in history to the admiration and honour of posterity; while, a petty thief, who may steal the watch of Dives, or a starving wretch, who snatches a loaf out of a baker's shop, gets sent to the treadmill--_their_ actions being only chronicled in the police news of the day.