needful moneys for the government less onerous.  Nor would it be interesting to Americans to go into those statistics.  I wonder even why they were so interesting to the English people.  One would naturally think that it was of little consequence whether duties on some one commodity were reduced, or those on another were increased, so long as the deficit in the national income had to be raised somehow, whether by direct or indirect taxation; but the interest generally felt in these matters was intense, both inside and outside Parliament.  I can understand why the paper-makers should object when it was proposed to remove the last protective duty, and why the publicans should wax indignant if an additional tax were imposed on hops; but I cannot understand why every member of the House of Commons should be present when the opening speech on the budget was to be made by the chancellor, why the intensest excitement should prevail, why members should sit for five hours enraptured to hear financial details presented, why every seat in the galleries should be taken by distinguished visitors, and all the journals the next day should be filled with panegyrics or detractions as to the minister’s ability or wisdom.

It would seem that no questions concerning war or peace, or the extension of the suffrage, or the removal of great moral evils, or promised boons in education, or Church disestablishment, or threatened dangers to the State,—­questions touching the very life of the nation,—­received so much attention or excited so great interest as those which affected the small burdens which the people had to bear; not the burden of taxation itself, but how that should be distributed.  I will not say that the English are “a nation of shopkeepers;” but I do say that comparatively small matters occupy the thoughts of men in every country outside the routine of ordinary duties, and form the staple of ordinary conversation,—­among pedants, the difference between ac and et; among aristocrats, the investigation of pedigrees; in society, the comparative merits of horses, the movements of well-known persons, the speed of ocean steamers, boat-races, the dresses of ladies of fashion, football contests, the last novel, weddings, receptions, the trials of housekeepers, the claims of rival singers, the gestures and declamation of favorite play-actors, the platitudes of popular preachers, the rise and fall of stocks, murders in bar-rooms, robberies in stores, accidental fires in distant localities,—­these and other innumerable forms of gossip, collected by newspapers and retailed in drawing-rooms, which have no important bearing on human life or national welfare or immortal destiny.  It is not that the elaborate presentations of financial details for which Mr. Gladstone was so justly famous were without importance.  I only wonder why they should have had such overwhelming interest to English legislators and the English public; and why his statistics should have given him claims