I may here add, as a ground for an increase rather than a reduction of the customary remuneration in respect of Public Works, that owing to the trouble, delays, and perplexities attendant upon official communications and requirements, the architect’s labours and anxieties are much greater than those which he has to incur in private practice; and, if this be true of public buildings of an ordinary character, it may be easily conceived, that those labours and anxieties have been incomparably greater in carrying into effect such a work as the New Palace at Westminster, in which not only the Government, but Committees of Parliament, and even the public, have unceasingly assumed the right of criticism and control. As one proof, among many others that might be adduced, of the enormous amount of labour that has already devolved upon me, in conducting this great national work to its present state, it will not be irrelevant to mention, that no less than between 8000 and 9000 original drawings and models have been prepared for it, a large portion of which have emanated from my own hand, while the whole of the remainder have been made under my own immediate direction and supervision. 4thly. “The very large amount of expenditure contemplated” is stated by the Commissioners of Woods as another ground for reducing the architect’s accustomed remuneration. I submit that in a work of the complicated and elaborate description of the New Palace at Westminster, the amount of expenditure incurred is a fair and just criterion of the amount of skill and labour required in producing it, and that, owing to the number of years over which the expenditure has extended, the annual amount upon an average has not been greater than upon other public works erected during the same period, upon which, up to the present time, the architect has in all cases been paid his accustomed amount of remuneration.