would have been far more to the purpose if he could have
congratulated the working-men of Liverpool on this vast Empire being
conducted in an orderly manner, on its laws being well administered
and well obeyed, its shores sufficiently defended, its people
prosperous and happy, on a revenue of L20,000,000. The State,
indeed, of which Lord John Russell is a part, may enjoy a revenue of
L100,000,000, but I am afraid the working-men can only be said
to enjoy it in the sense in which men not very choice in their
expressions say that for a long time they have enjoyed 'very bad
health'.

I am prepared to admit that it is a subject of congratulation that
there is a people so great, so free, and so industrious, that it can
produce a sufficient income out of which L100,000,000 a year, if need
absolutely were, could be spared for some great and noble object; but
it is not a thing to be proud of that our Government should require
us to pay that enormous sum for the simple purposes of government and
defence. Nothing can by any possibility tend more to the corruption of
a Government than enormous revenues. We have heard lately of instances
of certain joint-stock institutions with very great capital collapsing
suddenly, bringing disgrace upon their managers and ruin upon hundreds
of families. A great deal of that has arisen, not so much from
intentional fraud, as from the fact that weak and incapable men have
found themselves tumbling about in an ocean of bank-notes and gold,
and they appear to have lost all sight of where it came from, to whom
it belonged, and whether it was possible by any maladministration
ever to come to an end of it. That is absolutely what is done by
Governments. You have read in the papers lately some accounts of the
proceedings before a Commission appointed to inquire into alleged
maladministration with reference to the supply of clothing to the
army, but if anybody had said anything in the time of the late
Government about any such maladministration, there is not one of those
great statesmen, of whom we are told we ought always to speak with so
much reverence, who would not have got up and declared that nothing
could be more admirable than the system of book-keeping at Weedon,
nothing more economical than the manner in which the War Department
spent the money provided by public taxation. But we know that it is
not so. I have heard a gentleman--one who is as competent as any man
in England to give an opinion