The late Mr. Hume’s emphatic appreciation of a certain “modest assurance” as a means towards getting through life will be remembered. How the lamented sage would have envied the courage of Mr. Mann in putting his name to a document embodying these statements! It is really much the same as if the Astronomer Royal had presented to Parliament an elaborate calculation, signed with his proper name, in which he proved the diameter of the earth to be 25,000 miles, and its circumference 8,000! Seriously, the very least one might have expected from a public servant performing an important official duty would have been to abandon calculations which he must have observed led to nonsensical consequences; and not to put forth statements which, while they involved a gross libel upon the most venerable institution in the country, were calculated to prove, as they have proved, so fatally misleading. These very Tables 6 and 14 are of great importance. We are constantly hearing that the great towns monopolise the intelligence of the age, and that it is they which are to govern the country. What then, has been the verdict of the great towns on the question—Church _versus_ Dissent? According to these tables, the Church, in the large towns, has provided only 747,027 sittings to meet an increase in the population of 5,621,096 souls. Dissent, in the meantime, has furnished 1,873,305, or more than twice as many. The Church’s increase is not two-thirds the number of sittings she originally possessed; the increase of Dissent is more than sevenfold! If these figures were only correct, it would hardly be possible to conceive a more complete condemnation of the Church’s system; if they are not—and there is no reason to think that Dissent has materially altered its position in the large towns since 1801—it is impossible to imagine a more scandalous or a more gratuitous calumny.