These are all the public offices in the English government that it is necessary to mention. A description of the peculiar institutions of Scotland and Ireland is not within the scope of this book, except so far as they affect the central government. Until twenty years ago the connection of the government with matters relating exclusively to Scotland was maintained chiefly through the Home Office, but the Lord Advocate was virtually the parliamentary under-secretary for Scotch business, and took entire charge of it, unless his chief was a Scotchman, and cared to assert himself. In 1885 a Secretary for Scotland was created, one might perhaps say revived, and to him were intrusted for that kingdom duties corresponding to those discharged in England by the Home Office, the Local Government Board and the Board of Education. In fact he may be said to be the general representative for Scotch purposes of all the various civil departments of state; and in particular he is at the head of the Scotch Local Government Board and the Scotch Education Department. He is not one of the secretaries of state and receives a much smaller salary than they do, but he is a member of the ministry, usually, though not invariably, with a seat in the cabinet, and he is always a member of one or the other House of Parliament. The contrast between the relations of England to Scotland and to Ireland is striking. By the Act of Union of 1707 England and Scotland became one state, with a common Parliament and a common executive government, but political differences have not been obliterated. The Act of Union preserved the ecclesiastical and legal institutions of Scotland; and at the present day she has her own established church, which is Presbyterian; her own system of education, which is quite different from the English; and her own system of law, based upon the Civil not the Common Law, and adorned by a nomenclature so disfigured as to pass for her own. With such differences as these it has been not uncommon for Parliament, even where the same legislative principles were to be applied on both sides of the Tweed, to enact them in separate statutes, each adapted to the institutions of the country in which it is to operate. Socially, also, the fusion has not been complete. Every Scotchman is an Englishman, but an Englishman is not a Scotchman. The Scotch regard themselves as an elect race who are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen and to their own privileges besides. All English offices ought to be open to them, but Scotch posts are the natural heritage of the Scots. They take part freely in the debates on legislation affecting England alone, but in their opinion acts confined to Scotland ought to be, and in fact they are in the main, governed by the opinion of the Scotch members. Such a condition is due partly to the fact that Scotch institutions and ideas are sufficiently distinct from those of England to require separate treatment, and not different enough