demands the time and thoughts of our Cabinet. If every member of the Cabinet Council were, like the Secretaries of State, abundantly occupied with urgent affairs arising day by day, there would be nobody to forecast the necessary legislation, to note the currents of public opinion, to observe the signs of the times, to perceive the new needs that arise in the stress and storm' of modern competition and the daily struggles of our mixed society and affluent national life. The Prime Minister of the day has this duty imperatively imposed on him, but he requires aides. He cannot ask men cumbered with the reading and answering of a hundred daily letters or a score of serious despatches, and with the governance of hundreds of thousands or even millions of men, to turn aside from such pressing work in order to assist him in some preparative task intended to lay the basis of legislation, perhaps this session, perhaps next year. He wants for such purposes accomplished and experienced men, with the full sense of responsibility, and with ample leisure. No head-clerk, however able, could fulfil these conditions; and hence the use of retaining such offices as that of the Lord Privy Seal and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who may be in the Cabinet, but who have no heavy duties of

THE PRIVY SEAL NO SINECURE.

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their own, and can at any time be detached for temporary and special work."*

I now come to that important official, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. You know what a very thankless office his is, and how we hate the visits of his subordinates the tax-collectors. And not without reason for if there be one people who fully and completely enjoy the privilege of being taxed,

* On July 26, 1870, Sir C. Dilke moved in the House of Commons, "that the sinecure office of Lord Privy Seal should be abolished." Mr Gladstone in reply said, "that some supply of great officers of State was really requisite for the discharge of public business over and above that which was furnished by heads of departments. It was scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of the non-departmental business of the Cabinet. If men had their minds fully occupied with departmental subjects, it was not possible for them to give disengaged and concentrated attention to great matters wholly apart from departmental interests; but which, at the same time, it was absolutely necessary should be given by non-departmental members of the Government. Sometimes this arises in the case of bills which, though they may be brought to a particular department, were of such magnitude that they required the concentration of many minds. Take, for example, the bill relating to land tenure in Ireland. Though his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary possessed great ability and much knowledge of the subject, no department was equal to the formation of such a measure. He (Mr Gladstone) spent fully half his recess upon it, but neither he nor his right hon. friend could be alone equal to such a measure. The Cabinet bestowed a great deal of time on measures which it was absolutely necessary there should be men responsible for their introduction,

F

it is the inhabitants "of this bright little tight little island."

The Edinburgh Review,' when describing our state of taxation many years ago, summed up our taxes in the following pithy manner: "Taxes upon every article which enters the mouth or covers the back or is placed upon

who should not be absorbed by other business. His noble friend (Lord Kimberley), who was Lord Privy Seal, but who had now got an office more worthy of his energies and abilities, was of the greatest assistance in the formation of the Land Bill. It was the constant practice of Cabinets to appoint committees, and upon these committees the most laboriously-worked heads of departments could not sit, as a rule. The Government were represented by six members in the House of Lords. Four of these-the Lord Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, the Colonial Secretary, and the Indian Secretary-were hardly-worked officers of State; and with regard to the Lord President of the Council, he had to-day been asked whether, in consequence of the immense increase of duty which would be caused by the Education Bill, it would not be necessary to effect a separation of some of the duties of that department. The only adviser of the Crown in the House of Lords who, as a general rule, could take charge of measures not connected with particular departments was the Lord Privy Seal; and he could say that, for nine months of the year, the holder of that office was a fully-worked member of the Cabinet. There would be every desire on the part of the Government to give fair consideration to the subject, but they could not assent to the motion of his hon. friend."

the feet-taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion-taxes on everything on earth and the waters under the earth-on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home-taxes on the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man -taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite and the drug that restores him to healthon the ermine which decorates the judge and the rope which hangs the criminal-on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice-on the brass nails of the coffin and the ribbons of the bride-at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay;-the schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed whip on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon. that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent-makes his will on an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of an hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for bury

ing him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers-to be taxed no more."

Many of these taxes are now happily obsolete, but still both you and I have often to thank that important functionary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for attentions we could readily dispense with.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer at present exercises all the powers which formerly devolved upon the Treasury Board. He has the entire control and management of all matters relating to the receipt and expenditure of public money, including even the private revenues of the Queen. He has to frame regulations, &c., for conducting the business of all the financial departments of the country, and also to control the expenditure and fix the salaries and expenses of every department in which there is an expenditure of public money. He decides within the limits of the law upon all questions between the Queen and the subject which may arise out of the receipt and expenditure of public money, &c. The annual estimates of the sums required to defray the expenditure of Government in every branch of the public service, though submitted to Parliament by the Cabinet collectively, are framed upon the