TOPICS OF THE DAY.

EXECUTIVE ENCROACHMENTS.

Iv periods of revolution are hazardous, periods of great quiet have their more insidious dangers, and. prosperity aggravates the trials of a state. It is so pleasant to proceed from day to day with the steady increase of the general comfort, at the cost of taxes not very difficult to pay, with all the trouble taken off one's hands by the public servants! If a period of this kind has dangers, England ought at the present moment to be running some of the most serious risks that she has ever encountered. !Politically it is almost impossible to conceive a time of greater quiet. The quiescence indeed, extends far beyond politics ; it has become social. Free trade has deprived agriculture of its vicissitudes and our polities are no longer varied by the cry of " agricultural distress." Even commerce is descending into a routine. Art is becoming a business ; and while it is in the honeymoon of its wedding with manufactures, its annual exhibitions have become distinguished for a certain middle term of excellence, every one this year being without the conspicuous works for which we have been accustomed to look. Even in opera there is a want of "new blood," and a middle-aged gentleman from the church is welcomed as a novelty in the rank of first tenors; while the supreme potentates of song are veterans or something very like it. 'There never was so much money made by any community. as England is accumulating at present, privately and publicly. We see the public signs of it in the constant increase of our exports and imports and of the revenue ; while the extension of trade, the spread of buildings, the growth of luxury, prove the same progress in private life ; the working classes are engaged at remunerative wages, and do not trouble their heads about political rights. There is nothing, therefore, to ruffle the course of public men.

It is at such a period that we might expect to find the official classes encroaching in the exercise of power, and taking more into their own hands. And this is precisely the fact. Among the Parliamentary papers lately issued, is a bill for transferring the jurisdiction of the Board of Health to the Privy Council. A more inoffensive-looking measure could scarcely be imagined, and we may expect to hear much said in favour of this particular arrangement. The Department of Health was forced upon Ministers by enthusiasts, who saw that great public evil could be prevented or minimind by proper attention if persons were appointed for the purpose. The department has always been rather snubbed by its official superiors ; it has never been allowed enough strength to satisfy the public by its action ; and now it is to be merged in a great congeries ot departments—a grand miscellany of public offices. It is to be "annexed." The change will probably be extolled as an act of economy, which will figure in the tables of "reduction of the public expenditure," —a merit which silences some of the most troublesome Radicals in the House of Commons as completely as the cake thrown to the three-headed dog of Hell. The arrangement is sanctioned by precedent. If a department has to be merged and its business transferred to some existing body, there is always "the Privy Council." You have nothing to do but to make a new Committee in that body, and it will undertake anything, from the administration of justice to the administration of ornamental pottery. It is not, indeed, the most consistent with the scheme of our " constitution " to transfer a kind of police jurisdiction in sanitary matters to the Privy Councillors whose business it is to advise the Sovereign. On the contrary, such a function would form a proper branch of the Home Office ; and if the object were simply to reduce the Health department to a mere branch office, the proper way would have been to set apart a room in the Home Office, with a clerk and assistants in it, as the Health branch of the Executive which administers domestic affairs, especially in matters of police. Perhaps the notion is that more dignity is obtained by using the instrumentality of the Privy Council—that mandates issuing from that body, even when they are of no legal force, will exercise greater moral weight with the Great Unpaid, the local administrators about the country, to whom so much is now intrusted.

The inoffensive bill, however, is far less interesting as a specific

arrangement than as a sign of the times. It reminds us how much jurisdiction, authority, and power, are gradually drifting into the possession of the Privy Council. It is not a body properly constituted to execute :dministrative functions, or to be intrusted with great power in the exercise of direct authority over the people. What is the Privy Council? It consists of those notables who have been summoned to advise the Crown in affairs of difficulty. As a matter of usage, all persons who have once been summoned to the Privy Council constitute the body at large ; but those alone habitually attend who have some present official relation with the Government, and in fact receive specific summenses for attendance. They are not paid for their work, except by the honour of the thing, unless they hold some few distinct employments in connexion with the Council. They are, in the first instance, advisers of the Crown ; and they may, by commission, become the agents of the Crown to carry out the advice they give : but in any ease they act for the Crown, with whom they stand in much closer relation than with the Parliament. They are but. imperfectly responsible. Their high standing, the weighty matters intrusted to their charge without remuneration, are circumstances which confer a large amount of positive irre sponsibility upon the members of the body. In many respects they stand superior to Parliament, and look down with contempt upon the conflicts of the day. To intrust such a body with control over the people as direct and as stringent as police authority_, is at variance with the modern theory of our constitution ; which renders the Executive Ministers directly responsible to Parliament, and obliges them to be officially present in one House or the other. This irresponsible body has by degrees been the recipient of jurisdiction, both in the first instance and even in the last resort, for several of the most important branches of public administration. It holds in its hand the appellute jurisdiction in judicial matters, the administration of trade, the conduct of popular education, the promotion of art, and the superintendence over the great iron highways. To these functions of active administration is added jurisdiction in a police control over the publio health. What next? It would appear that by degrees this vaguely-constituted, anomalous body of advisers to the Sovereign, by its very nature independent of Parliament, is becoming the general agent for executive business. It would be idle to dream of creating any darns about the official apotheosis for the Board of Health. People will be as glad to see it in one form as another, and as indifferent. Whatever arrangement Lord Palmerston proposes for the public offices will probably be accepted, in the interval between his promise to give us a Reform Bill and his performance of that promise. And in the present state of public information on the subject of health, we are not sure that for health objects the proposal is worse than the maintenance of an abortive separate department. But we are sure that there is a grave danger in the tendency thus to substitute something even less distinct and responsible than a Board,namely, the Committee of a half-organized and irresponsible body like the Privy Council. It has been proposed to refer to it another branch of business—to substitute for the promised "Minister of Justice" another "Committee of thia, Privy Council." There is not only danger, but disappointment In such a course. The Minister of Justice ought to be a more aetwo executive officer even than the Attorney-General, especially in matters of legislation. It should be his part to exercise an individual will, to bring the indeterminate views of suggesters to a definite purpose, and to carry measures of improvement through Parliament by his personal energy and influence. In order to acquire that power, he should himself be a man ebviously, responsible to the two Houses of Parliament, personally responsible for his acts, and rewarded for a faithful discharge of his duty by a corresponding amount of public estimation as well as -adequate payment. Distribute the responsibility through the members of a Committee, and what becomes of it? Attempt to exercise personal influence through that kind of divided personality, and what result can you obtain ? Can a Committee make a speech ? An address can only be delivered by several persons at once with the help of musical order and harmony ; but could a Committee, even with the best-selected voices address either House of Parliament in a glee or quartet? The Committee of Justice would prove to be nothing more than an expedient for silencing a public demand, without satisfying it. It would not give us the thing wanted—personal concentration of responsibility and influent*. But if it were carried out, it might have the effect of creatingra jurisdiction in the legislative administration of law over the head. of the Attorney-General, and handing it to that anomalous and unconstitutional recipient of executive power the Privy Council.

LORD ROBERT GROSVENOR'S BILL

THE objections to Lord Robert Grosvenor's bill are a sufficient answer to it as a separate effort of legislation ; but they do not dispose of the evidence that legislation on the two points which he touches is necessary. It is an absurdity that the providing of public machinery for the election of Members of Parliament should be thrown upon the candidates. It is inconsistent to forbid bribery or treating, and to let the candidate lay out his means in a wholesale employment of cabs for the conveyance of voters. Yet it is true that, under present circumstances, simply to abolish the two abuses might give opportunity for fresh abuses. If candidates were relieved of the hustings and polling-booth exponses,, no doubt, under the pretence of seeking election, perhaps in the vain belief of obtaining it, men without the slightest claim on the attention of the electors would use the platform as a means of display, to the gross interruptionof real business. The payment of cabs is an abuse, for it tends in some constituencies to reserve the chance of election at the poll to that class of gentlemen who can afford to pay four or five thousand pounds in cab-hire ; but simply to prohibit the payment would equally tend to deprive the poorer electors of their vote, to give the rich voters a monopoly of the franchise, and so far to shut out the chance of the more popular representatives. Lord Robert Grosvenor, in fact, points out serious defects in our present system, which will have to be considered in any comprehensive measures for improving the mechanism of representation. If the voters cannot be brought to the poll on account of its distance from their abodes, either the poll should be carried to them, as it might in the shape of voting-papers, or the overgrown electoral districts should be broken up into portions which might return one member each, and so carry the representation home to every voter in the district. And if the relief of the candidates from election expenses were likely to be attended by an inconvenient multiplication of candidates not even expecting to be returned, the arrangement of any well-considered measure might put a cheek upon that abuse without maintaining another. As a separate enactment, Lord Robert Grosvenor's bill is open to as much objection as the defects which it proposes to remove; but in conjunction with Mr. Locke Xing's two bills, with the general demand of many constituencies for the ballot, and with the strengthened convictions of leading political men this essay at detailed reform establishes the necessity for settling all such questions by an effectual and comprehensive measure, which would leave no room for further agitation on the separate points. For the introduction of such a measure Lord Palmerston has rendered himself answerable. Last week he said, "It would be inexpedient for this House to enter into discussions upon so large and sweeping a question as that of a change in the representation of the people in Parliament." "I admit, however," he said, "that it will be the duty of the Government to give that matter their most serious and anxious consideration; and I am confident," he continued, "that at the beginning of the next session we shall be able to propose to Parliament measures which will be well calculated to meet just expectations." The public, we believe, will expect that all the defects which influential Members have attempted to cure by separate tinkerings will be disposed of in a measure as comprehensive and as "sweeping" as -That which Lord Palmerston has led us to anticipate. The whole force of this pledge hinges upon the question, what are the "expectations" of the public? It is a point on which the Premier is likely to be misled, especially at a time when the public is so far quiescent. Great mistakes have before now been made respecting the actual state of public opinion in the country. Down to Lord Grey's time, the most experienced men believed Parliamentary Reform to be a dream ; Sir Robert Peel once thought Catholic Emancipation impossible ; Lord Melbourne declared the repeal of the Corn-laws to be "the maddest project that ever entered the brain of man " ' • even in the present day men of the highest position and authority believed that the middle class of this country would be totally. apposed to the war with Russia ; and they were strengthened in their belief by the circumstance that Members of the House of Commons, supposed peculiarly to represent the middle class, protested against the war, on trading principles. The discovery of the real sentiments of the middle class was a surprise to some of our most experienced statesmen, men who have subsequently been thought to have hit the very temper of the English people. Mistakes, therefore, can easily be made, especially when the country is not agitated upon any determinate point. Yet mistakes may be seriously detrimental to the Minister that makes them. Lord Palmerston has raised* "just expectation" on the subject of the coming Rahapa ROL Without that pledge, the subject might perhaps, by a little manceuvering, have been staved off for years,. but any attempt at evasion now would do something worse for the Minister than support the vague and latent desire for Reform; it would disappoint just expectation" —would provoke anger attended by something like contempt ; and the triumphant career of a popular Minister might end in a bathos that would cut him to the heart. It is therefore of the first importance to the work which Lord Palmerston has undertaken, and to his own repute in history, that he should ascertain what really are the expectations of the various classes of the English people. Quiet as the public is, those expectations, whatever they may be, are a matter of fact ; and if sufficient pains be taken, they can be ascertained. It would not do to presume their character; it would be a still more fatal mistake to assert any negative assumptions about them.

RESCUE FOR THE POOR OFFICERS.

A SPECIES of inverted chivalry claims a protection for the military character almost as delicate as if soldiers were women and could not defend themselves. This is chivalrous delicacy carried to an extreme which might defeat itself. Some military person had addressed to the Times letters reflecting on the appointment of General Ashburnham, as a man who has shown incapacity for military command by refusing a signal opportunity to distinguish himself. It is needless to repeat the story in detail ; it amounts to this—Having been stationed at a particular post, and invited without authority to leave that post for the purpose of attacking the enemy, General Ashburnham preferred sticking to his orders and resisted the temptation : hence it was somewhat hastily inferred that he was -wanting in moral if not in military courage. Strictly speaking, the facts prove nothing more than General Ashburnham's strong sense of military duty ; and since he has not been denied an appointment on the strength of these adverse rumours, he has sustained no very serious injury. There are no bones broken, literally or metaphorically ; and General Ashburnham, who has the appointment, with probably a new opportunity of signalizing himself, may laugh at newspaper critics, whose blows fall short, and who do not share his military good fortune. It is quite natural that his Mends should be irritated, and they have stood up in his defence ; which is right enough : moreover, the Government, which appointed General Ashburnham, and is held answerable for the maintenance of etiquette in all such matters, frowns upon the evil-speakers. Last week, Lord Panmure echoed the complaint that a particular letter about General Ashburnham signed "It. L." had "opened the columns of the public press to those malignant slanders which too many malignant officers are ready to launch against their superior officers " : and afterwards he said—" When an officer in her Majesty's service, whether in the Line or in the Company's ranks, anonymously tra duced his brother officer, he was unfit to carry the commission of the Queen; and unfit to associate with his colleagues in the profession." In all these remarks the speakers are discussing the personal question. Criticism by subordinate officers might be properly restrained where it is injurious to the public service. If Lord Raglan suffered unjustly, the public service in the Crimea suffered yet more seriously from ill-advised attacks, and even from ill-advised disclosure of the truth. This larger question, however, does not excite so much anxious controversy as the purely personal matter. In the second allusion to the Ashburnham case, Lord Panmure spoke in more general terms : he "had no hesitation in saying, that in eases where inferior officers either anonymously or otherwise, made attacks on the conduct Of their superior officers, he should be happy to give to the Commanderin-chief all the assistance he could in bringing them to account." —Bring them to account, in what way? Are officers, whether in or out of employment, to be debarred, not only from crossing the command of their superiors, but even from criticizing them ? This would be a very dangerous and inconvenient principle to assert positively. Carry it to the extreme, and it amounts to saying that no Napier would be free to write the history of the Peninsular war without retiring from the Army ; that no military campaign could be told by. any man who took part in it, except on the principle of praising his brother officers and freely criticizing none.

General William Napier comments on the Ashburnham affair ; and in doing so, gives us a cogent illustration of official palaver, and an instance of the bad style of criticism which he is vehement in censuring. Lord Panmure said, in the passage which we have quoted, that an officer speaking harshly of his superior is unfit to be employed.

"This," says Sir William Napier, "is talk. Mark the practice. When Sir C. Napier was at the head. of an army in the field, and in most difficult circumstances, Sir James °tartan, then Colonel or Major Outram; published a letter filled with shameful and shameless calumnies and insinuationa against Sir Charles Napier. He told the soldiers that their General, with an ignorance below that of a subaltern, had moved them through pestilent marshes, and wilfully as well as ignorantly caused the frightful mortality which had befallen them ; in fact, that he was their murderer."

So Sir Charles Napier demanded "protection," says Sir William, but he could not get it; in revenge, his brother seizes the opening offered by the defence in the ease of Ashburnham, to retort that Sir James Outram, who criticized his superior in rank, has obtained a splendid employment, and is at this moment head of the Persian expedition. Even supposing this statement were not tainted by gross exaggeration,, what does it suggest ? Should Government have held itself precluded from using the abilities and acquirements of Sir JainesOutram because he had once criticized Sir Charles Napier, or was supposed to have done so ? Or should we debar ourselves from the advantage of a Peninsular History because the Napiers cannot restrain themselves from indecent scurrility when they get upon controversial matters ? There is something ridiculous in this ultra effeminate idea that military men must be "protected," above all people in the world. There was a time when a gentleman, much more a soldier, thought that he was able to defend himseff.' We may be told, indeed, that they have lost that self-protection since the practice of duelling is discountenanced by society : and some inconveniences ,may attend that mark of "progress.' Men who are moral cowards may take advantage of that "improvement" to venture upon insults which would have been checked by the fear of a horsewhip or a pistol. It does not follow that military men should go whining to the Horse Guards to be saved from the criticism of their subordinates. After all, criticism can only borrow its strength from the force of the facts stated, and from the evil speaker the aggrieved must appeal in the last resort to public opinion ; and public opinion will pronounce its judgment with the greater clearness and distinctness in proportion as it is well-informed—that is, in proportion as the facts are plainly and openly stated, and as discussion is free.

GENERA LS FOR THE BRITISH ARMY.

A CORRESPONDENT challenges attention to the present mode of manufacturing Generals. He thinks that Generals—" good working men, like Mouravieff and Pelissier"—are quite as much wanted as a good Staff; but he is of opinion, that so long as the present mode prevails we shall never have Generals who will command the confidence of the army and the country.

There is, unfortunately, but too much ground for the complaint. As a nation, we are not scantily supplied with military genius, but we let it run wild. We have been in the habit of trusting to chance and routine for our Generals. Officers have arrived at the rank of Major-General mainly because they had been a certain time in the service. They may be good soldiers—they may be nincompoops ; they may have seen war on a large or a small scale—they may have simply served with their regiments for a given time, then lived for a score of years on half-pay, to wake up some morning and read their new title in the Gazette. No pains has been taken to educate them: if they are accomplished soldiers, they owe it to themselves ; if they are not, they owe their promotion to luck and persistency. But it must be galling to the officer who has done the state some service, who has bled for it, who has learnt his profession conscientiously of his own free will, to find the Honourable Doolittle and Colonel Great Interest in the same rank with himself. Yet such must always be the results of a system of promotion by seniority alone ; and such are the results of our old system of promotion in the higher grades. In the Centinental armies a different practice has prevailed. In France, all promotion beyond the rank of Major is made on the principle of selection. The same practice prevails in Prussia, where an officer who has been passed over two or three times may consider that he has received an intimation to retire from the service. In Austria, seniority still contends with selection. The balance of authority is in favour of the latter.

In our own service, a great change was made by the Royal Warrant of October 1854. That warrant not only abolished periodical brevets, the old. mode of lifting Colonels to the rank of Major-General, but ordained that promotion to the rank of MajorGeneral should go on in a regular manner, and established a sort of principle of selection, by providing that "Colonels should be eligible for promotion to the rank of Major-General. and MajorGenerals to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and LieutenantGenerals to the rank of Generals, for distinguished services in the field." It even went so far as to give the distinguished officers a .priority for promotion over the senior Colonels. This was a decided step in advance, but it is very far from all that is required to secure young and competent working Generals. Not that we concur with our correspondent in thinking that all officers who have not seen service in the field should "stop at the rank of Colonel." It would be a very harsh thing to bar the promotion of a regimental officer who has efficiently performed his duties, and maintained, perhaps raised, the character of his corps. Many have a right to expect promotion to the higher grades who are unfit to command an army. Besides, an officer who has purchased his steps feels that he -has, may -we say, a kind of commercial claim to those steps which he cannot purchase. This is an ugly aspect of the purchase system, yet while we continue that system it is one we cannot overlook. But it throws into high relief the humiliating fact that the profession of arms is with many as much a pecuniary investment as partnership in a cotton-factory, a share in a fat mortgage, or the money-lending trade.

The evil of promotion by seniority is, that the upper ranks are full of aged men, and probably otherwise unfit for the stress and responsibility of a chief command. The weak side of selection is, that it opens a wide door to vicious and interested if not corrupt promotion. Follow either system exclusively, and you shall rind officers on the list of Generals who are unfit to command an army, yet who, having influence at Court or in the War Department, may obtain a command. So far as age is concerned, the evil might be met by adopting the principle of compulsory retirement on full pay after a certain age. Yet this course might at a critical moment deprive us of our best man. As a last resource in our effort ,y6secure good Generals, we may be driven to take refilge witli'coiiimon sense, and adopt the only mode of obtaining them, namely, by insisting that they shall know their profession; and we are compelled to repeat, that the best mode of stimulating the training of officers of all arms is to preserve staff-appointments as prizes granted for theoretical and practical soldiership.

And when we have done this something will still remain. The best list of officers we are likely to get would contain the names of men of varying ability. There would be room for a choice. Now who is responsible for the selection ?—The War Minister. Here, then is the knot of the question. Even with our self-educated soldiers we always have among them very able men. It is clear that unless the War Minister be a man strongly addicted to forgetting " Dowb," a man of unquestionable insight into military character and of a firm will, the best men will never be selected. There were many good Generals in India when, in 1841, Lord Auckland selected General Elphinstone to command the army at Cabal ; and, whether he wanted firmness to withstand temptation, or insight to discern the best man, the result was the same—the most incompetent officer was appointed. So that it really comes to this—the best man will rarely be selected unless the Minister intrusted with the momentous choice is competent to his work. Now if the character of the whole of our officers were raised, a mediocre Minister or a corrupt one could not blunder so very far; and if he did, and our Staff were educated, the chance is that the Staff would complement the deficiencies of the General. And this brings us back to the repeated counsel, that the first step in military reform should be the creation of a powerful Staff, which would be a mighty engine in the hands of a great General, and a shield of safety to cover one of lesser capacity.

MORE HOUSES FALLING.

LAST Saturday morning was a busy time in a certain house that stood in a very conspicuous position in Tottenham Court Road. It was the house occupied by Messrs. Maple and Co., pushing furniture-dealers who had various reasons for a stir in their household. In the first place Mr. Hunter, next door, also a pushing furniture-dealer, had been visited by a fire, which had so far damaged his house as to render a rebuilding necessary. A fire is a great calamity ; but "it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good," and the fire formed the materials for a startling effect in an advertisement on the "dreadful sacrifice" principle. The advertisement not only announced valuable furniture which had been injured, and so forth, but the rebuilding of the house ; which already began to tower above the street in very imposing proportions. If Hunter improves, so must Maple; and the two next-door furniture-dealers seemed to be running a race of improvement.

There must always have been plenty of work doing ; for in the house occupied by Mr. Maple -several of the workpeople re

sided. They were getting up ; the cook was preparing the first breakfast. 'While the shop-people were dressing, they were rendered doubly conscious of the stirring times by the sounds of knocking. "Ferret opus." But while the industrious people are rising from their beds and preparing for the labours of the day, undistracted by the hammering in their own house and the next, a sudden tremor is felt—the very house turns dizzy—the floors give way—the rooms become distorted before the bewildered eyes of the inmates—and in a. moment that which was a house becomes a heap of ruins, with the industrious people either mangled corpses or struggling and terror-stricken amid the rubbish. Death, mutilation, and agony, have been suddenly inflicted upon these people.

A Coroner's inquest has commenced; but from the first the facts were so distinct that there could not be much doubt as to the general result, and the inquiry chiefly turned upon the details. As we have seen, there were two classes of workmen engaged upon the two buildings. In Mr. Hunter's house the works were intrusted to a Mr. Jackson • in Mr. Maple's to a Mr. Taylor. Between the two houses was a Puty-wall, and Mr. Baker, the district-surveyor, had required that party-wall to be strengthened by "under-pinning." What is under-pinning ? It consists in removing the undermost strata of brickwork or masonry, and replacing it by masonry or other materials, only stronger, and perhaps begun deeper down in the earth. It follows that in a process of this kind the wall to be strengthened requires to be supported by some extraneous means. This is done in two ways, either by diagonal props called "shores," or by "needles "—upright props on each side supporting a transverse bar which is the real stay of the wall. We do not perceive that any such props were used in this ease. They would probably have caused some delay, and. an outlay of ton pounds. A falling house is no novelty in London. We have referred to oases before and we fear that their number will multiply.. No doubt, the 'lances are calculated very fine, and the probability of any one particular house is that it will stand. But if we have only a small percentage of houses giving way, especially if repairs arc so carried on as to expedite the process of disintegration, families may naturally and properly live in just terror of a catastrophe. There are large districts in which the breakfast may be interrupted by a hideous calamity ; and the worst of it is, that the present style of building tends to perpetuate a state of things which may make every man's home an engine for his destruction. We become accustomed to familiar dangers, and it appears that where there are no natural perils society will create them for itself. The people oinatiini a return to the site of a town which has been mote than 'oncelestroyed by earthquake; and the Londoner continues to take a kind of house which in the very principle of its construction comprises an earthquake within-doors.

INEQUALITY OF POOR-RATES.

THE proposal for a Metropolitan rating to the poor looks, on the first blush, as if it were a cure for the inequality thrown upon some parishes to the advantage of others. By the improvements in one spot the residents of the labouring class are compelled to move into another, which is already burdened by more than its share of poor ; the rich parish is reheved at the expense of the poor parish; and it seems but fair that the balance should be redressed by making the two contribute in proportion to their means. Metropolitan-rating is in principle exactly analogous to union-rating ; only, from the peculiar distribution of the Metropolis, the application of union-rating has not sufficed. An inequality ousts between unions, and the residence of the poor is as much drawn out of one union into another as it is out of one parish into another.

The official reply is easy, and highly "constitutional," Mr. Bouverie is right in saying that Metropolitan-rating would take the control over rates out of the hands of the parish, and replace it in some centralized authority. It is quite true that at present there is no tendency to excessive expenditure ; on the whole, the fashion runs rather in the opposite direction ; and any central managers for the whole metropolis would of course be inclined to keep down the general level of the rates. Still, the larger a community, the more elevated in rank are the persons usually selected to administer its public affairs, the more removed from a personal care for homely thrift; and probably the administrators of the poor-rates for the whole metropolis would be less earnest than parish-managers in their care to keep down the rates. The official reply, though commonplace, is founded on truth.

Nor would the level distribution of rates cure the real evil, which does not consist so much in the charge made upon particular parishes—though that is unfair—as in the artificially-produced density of the poor population upon certain spots. This is rather the cause than the effect of unequal rating ; remove that cause, and unequal rating would cease in the natural course of things. The poor are driven into the oppressed parishes by a style of improvement in the class of buildings which ignores their existence and makes no provision for their residence. The artificial density of the population is attended by bad sanitary circumstances, and by a serious inconvenience inflicted on the poor who are separated from the scene of their work. No mere equality of rating would cure these two worst evils ; but another !rind. of improvement would cure them: it would consist in a better style of distributing. Metropolitan improvement; giving in the main thoroughfares houses of a betterprice for tenants of a higher. rank, but reserving in all quarters a due proportion of bye-streets for well-constructed houses open to residents of the working class. The letting of such houses is understood to "pay" quite as well as the better class. We agree with the Times in thinking that speculation in well-conducted building operations of that kind would yield a handsome return to the capital ; and it would directly cure those two evils which are worse than inequality of rating—the removal of the working man from the scene of his work, and the crowding of poor residents in poor neighbourhoods already over-crowded.