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modern legislation that it should pass into an Act" (p. 115). On Tuesday, the 6th July, we see the bill was in committee. "Amendments made; report on Friday" (p. 120). Once more during the session the "Public Grounds and Playgrounds Bill" is introduced into the legislative mangle, and receives its last kick from the zealous and industrious commentator. On the 12th July, it is recorded, "Report put off from to-morrow sine die. This bill has undergone much improvement since it came into the Lords. Both the points particularly named before (p. 95), have been removed. The bill no longer proposes to make as a new law that which already exists; and the 'consent of two justices' no longer interferes to destroy responsibility and efficiency, but the unmeaning red-tape obstructions remain. The lords of the treasury,' 'poor-law board,' and charity commissioners,' are still brought in to meddle with public playgrounds in country towns and villages, and to interfere with the management of their own affairs, and disposition of their own property, by boroughs and parishes. There is not the shadow of propriety in this interference; but such is the actual mistrust shewn in our day, while the pretence of progress and intelligence is so loud. Bodies like these cannot by possibility know any thing whatever of the affairs they are thus empowered to intermeddle with; and this interference can never be any other than an actual hindrance and frustration of the public good. The very method of their meddling, moreover, is secret, ex parte, and in violation of every principal of honest right and of English judicial proceeding. But this mischievous legislation gives the opportunity to swell the statistical appearance of official doings; and thus, by deluding the weak and unthinking to deem them important, the places and salaries of functionaries get themselves sustained and increased at the expense of the public; while public morality, efficient action, and responsible self-respect, all suffer."

The above extracts afford very fair samples of the particular parliamentary misfeasances which Mr. Smith delights in attacking, as well as his mode of exposing them. But we will add another,

which is also of considerable merit and interest. "The Highway Bill" was a measure perfectly adapted to Mr. Smith's criticism. He accordingly denounced it as proposing to effect a complete revolution in the oldest institutions of England. “It has no preamble-no need for change being able to be stated as the ground of the bill. The parishes of England have from the oldest times been responsible for the highways within each of them; and the highways have improved all over England, with the improvement in carriages and the growth of traffic. In a country parish, where any thing besides the farmer's cart seldom goes or comes, a road is not needed such as is necessary in Pall Mall. The taxation of every parish for the repair of its road has hitherto been a parish affair, or the result of a direct parish election; and the accounts have been obliged to be laid before the parish vestry" (p. 13, sess. 1859). The writer then proceeds to show how the bill proposes to hand over the control of the affairs of parishes in this important matter to the irresponsible justices of the peace, and the poor-law board; and how every constitutional principle is set at nought in this bill, both as regards institutions and taxation. Elsewhere, when treating of the same subject, he has the following remark :-"The capacity, moral and intellectual, that enables men really and thoughtfully to exercise the franchise of parliamentary election, can never be got by instinct or act of parliament, nor can it be given by any amount of so called 'education' of the right kind, however carefully and elaborately driven in, even on a Prussian model, by the stick of the drill-serjeant. It can only be got and given by that true education which the actual practice of free institutions yields. That practice consists not in names and forms, but in the habit of men meeting together, to consider, and discuss, and determine; whence is begotten the sense of mutual responsibility, and the feeling that there is something to be aimed at beyond what is merely personal and selfish, as well as a knowledge of what deliberation on every subject has to encounter. Within late years there has unhappily been an increasing and too successful attack made in England, by those seeking to

plant here the continental doctrinaire system upon the institutions which ensured this habitual training; so that at this moment, though there may be more reading and writing, more book-knowledge in the land than heretofore, there is very far less of what is much more important-independence of thought and feeling, and the practical education of the free man. The present bill aims at striking down the most universal existing institutions in which the relics of that noble training system linger.

"Enlarging the franchise [referring to the proposed Reform bill], while cutting off men from the training school which teaches them how to exercise it, is merely plotting a scheme by which men shall be driven to the poll in herds, unintelligent, and the mere instruments of the selfishness of this or that designing man or faction. * * * * * * This system, which would do every thing for men, instead of calling upon the intelligence and responsibility of all men to do themselves what concerns them, does but offer a bribe to sheer slothfulness and selfishness to shun the trouble of that exertion, whether of thought or action, which is necessary, in order to maintain the spirit of manliness, and the consciousness of independence, and the reality of selfrespect, as well as the course of true enterprise and sound progress. Despotism always covers its encroachments under the mask of some fair pretences. The worst forms of despotism is the silent enslaving of a nation by functionarism and bureaucracy. The means by which these foes to our institutions and liberties have made, and are still making, their way in England, are by continual appeals to the selfish interests and slothful tempers of men immersed in the eager pursuit of self-aggrandizement, or eager to swell their own self-importance.

"It matters not whether designs and attempts such as these exhibit themselves in affairs of highway management or under any other cover. They are equally characteristic of a jesuitical and profligate system, most dangerous to the true interests and welfare of humanity, and which, unstayed, will prove fatal to the liberties of Englishmen."

The same sentiments are expressed, and the like doctrines expounded, on various occasions, not always, as we venture to think, with equal justice. It is a truth of that character which is, in modern literary slang, called a truism, that local self-government has all the advantages which Mr. Smith attributes to it. It has also, when applied in certain places, under certain circumstances, and to certain subjects, disadvantages. Vestries, local boards, parish meetings, aud borough assemblages, are not always governed by broad practical views, unjobbing practices, and timely dealing with necessary subjects. Hence bigotry, party and personal feeling, excessive selfishness and indifference, and stupid narrow-mindedness, are, and have always been, qualilities by no means uncommon among bodies of the description in question. In some matters, we may depend upon it, it is better that the legislating power and management should not be that immediately connected with particular local associations. A model parish managing its own affairs is an interesting exhibition of excellent government; but instances where the parochial management is in the hands of an overbearing squire and his unfortunate dependants, or of an acute local lawyer and his creatures, or even a majority of pigheaded farmers or small shopkeepers, whose minds and fists are equally closed to all consideration except keeping down the immediate expenses-such pictures as these, we say, are not equally pleasing.

Moreover, whether for good or evil we will not speculate, but times have much changed since the early periods of our social and political institutions. Parishes and districts are not isolated, as of yore. Modern means of intercommunication have rendered it not only possible but advisable to secure greater harmony of action over large areas, and more certain responsibility to central authority throughout the country, than was wont to be the case. Thus, local constables, for long the laughing-stock of thieves and tramps, are being gradually superseded by county constabulary—the old parochial pauper system has been succeeded by that of the new poor-law. The real problem of the day is not to preserve in their integrity all the institutions and the peculiar

privileges which were useful of old, but to modify and abolish them when advisable, and to invent new ones as our present need may require. History would be a mere incumbrance, and experience an evil, if they were employed as trammels and fetters. What our forefathers did we must do-exercise our liberties in devising the best practicable method of managing our affairs under the exigencies which absolutely arise; and it by no means follows that our freedom will be diminished because we depute officials to perform functions-" functionaries" we must call them-to do what formerly we did for ourselves. Labour is more subdivided now-a-days. More has to be done in the business of life, which now travels faster. Time is less readily spared for much talking, and leisurely amateur occupations of a public nature. Whether happily or no, such is the ordering of affairs, and we must submit to it. Nevertheless, it is well to have a warning voice like that which-deep and repeated-Mr. Toulmin Smith emits, to bid the public know what it is they are losing, and whither they are tending. The utility of such a contemporary critic is all the more enhanced, because he speaks very distinctly, and with great boldness. There can be no mistake as to his meaning. We soon learn where his hobby-horses are stabled, and when they will be summoned, to be hard-ridden by their owner. The reader, armed with this knowledge, cannot fail to peruse the Parliamentary Remembrancer with great advantage. He will not be able, probably, to see with the author the perfectness of ancestral wisdom, or of the liberty which they enjoyed in institutions which are being sacrificed.

We wish we could venture to extract in full from No. 42 (July 2, 1859), the vigorous paper upon "Volunteer Rifle Clubs," which is replete with learning, but marked with the one-sidedness to which we have already adverted. Mr. Smith here points out that the invitation to the arming of the people was said in parliament, "by men who pretend to be well informed, to be a novelty, an experiment, 'something greater than any government ever before dealt with;' that it was solemnly declared that the consequences of the people possessing the means of self-defence,

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