any change no matter what, vindictive towards a society which renders them outcasts, and sullen or reckless in their general conduct.’--On the contrary, they feel settled in their condition; they know that the cottage which constitutes their home, is not held upon a precarious tenure: they never feel the sickening conviction that if they have bread and meat to-day, they may have only bread to-morrow, and no food at all the day after. The industrious classes in Castelcicala are no longer the mere slaves and tools of the wealthy classes: they are no longer retained in bondage--no longer kept in absolute serfdom by an oligarchy. I now pass to another subject,” said the Prince: “and here again I refer to the speech of the Earl of Ellingham--applying to Castelcicala the observations which he used in reference to England. The Castelcicalan industrious classes, then, ‘were ground down by indirect taxes, in which shape they actually contributed more to the revenue, in proportion to their means, than the rich. The only luxuries which the poor enjoyed, and which had become as it were necessaries--namely, tea, sugar, tobacco, beer, and spirits,--were the most productive sources of revenue. If aristocrats reproached the poor for dirty habits, as he well knew that it was their custom to do, he would ask them why soap was made an article subject to so heavy a tax? It was a contemptible fallacy to suppose that because the poor contributed little or nothing in the shape of direct taxation to the revenue, they were positively untaxed. The real fact was that the poor paid more in direct taxes than the rich did in both direct and in indirect ways, when the relative means of the two parties were taken into consideration.’--Such was the state of the industrious classes of Castelcicala until their voice was heard in the legislative assemblies; and all taxes upon the necessaries of life were speedily removed. Luxuries alone were left to bear the weight of taxation--the duties upon carriages, livery servants, armorial bearings, hunters, racers, hounds, and foreign wines being doubled.” The Prince of Montoni paused; and the Earl of Ellingham exchanged a rapid but significant glance with Mr. Hatfield--for they both remembered the time when, nineteen years previously, and when the latter lay on the bed in Old Death’s house, they had conversed upon the best means of ameliorating the condition of the suffering millions. His Royal Highness, finding that his auditors were most anxious that he should continue his explanations, and perceiving that Sir John Lascelles had become especially interested therein, resumed his subject in the following manner:--