to do this thing and t'other thing; and actually prints the word ABUSES' in roman capitals-read it who will! All this is very formidable: but why, we must again ask, should Mr. Bowles presume the complaints about the appointment of the commissioners to be better founded than those of which he was himself a competent judge, and of which he has successfuly exposed the injustice? Above all, how happens it that in moaning over the names which are not forthcoming, he passes by that of Lord Grenville, the Chancellor of Mr. Bowles's own University, a man of unquestioned honour, integrity and firmness, of an accuracy and industry rarely combined with such transcendant talents, one of the ablest statesmen and confessedly one of the ripest scholars of the age? The letter-writer might have his reasons for not dwelling too fondly on his bitter regrets for Lord Grenville: but how happens it that from Mr. Bowles not a sigh is heard for the absence of this venerated name? Why are Mr. Bowles's groans nothing but echoes? ne gemitus quidem liber.

Does Mr. Bowles know to how many of the intended honorary Commissioners, proposals may have been made by the Govern ment, and in how many instances those proposals may have been declined? From the silence of the Letter' as to the omission of Lord Grenville we should infer that proposals had been made to that eminent man, and that he had declined them. From the studied coupling of the names of Lord Lansdown and the Bishop of London in the complaint, we should think it not improbable that proposals had been made to one of them, though perhaps not to the other. It would be invidious to enter into comparisons. For the character and talents of Lord Lansdown, Mr. Bowles cannot feel a higher respect than we do. But without detracting from that sentiment, we may venture to express a doubt whether any man, however gifted, who is in the full, active and energetic discharge of the duties of a party leader in Parliament, be precisely the sort of person fittest to be placed in a Commission from which it would be most desirable to exclude every feeling of a political

nature.

As to the Bishop of London, deeply indeed is it to be regretted if the duties of a most important and laborious diocese, filled by him as it is in a manner that gives satisfaction to every friend of the church, and extorts applause even from its enemies, should have rendered it inconvenient for him to accept the charge of superintending this investigation. In the liberality, candour and equity which mark the character of that amiable prelate, we should have seen ample security that he would have been the last man in the country to approve ex-parte evidence, or to lend his ear to the suggestions of malignant, or interested, or anonymous informers. The honorary commissioners actually consist of two members

of each house of parliament, with the addition of Sir William Grant and Mr. Yorke; who, no longer members of the House of Commons, are known to the world by the reputation and authority which they enjoyed there, and by the dignity and efficiency with which they respectively discharged the duties, the one, of all but the highest judicial office in a court of equity, the other of Home Secretary of State. What objection can Mr. Bowles possibly have to such men as these? or to the Bishops of St. Asaph and Peterborough, two able prelates, placed in the commission, we conceive, to contribute that information upon ecclesiastical matters, which must frequently be requisite in the proceedings or to the Speaker, omni exceptione major? or to Sir William Scott; of whom the letter-writer can suggest no more plausible disqualification than that his constituents are known to be, in general, the warmest enemies of the whole inquiry'? If, by this expression it be intended to imply, that the University of Oxford are, generally speaking, averse to the inquiry into abuses of charities, we have no hesitation in pronouncing the charge to be ill-founded. No persons have a greater interest than the Clergy in promoting the education of the poor; and none, in fact, do contribute a larger portion of their trouble, their time, and their incomes to that purpose. We will venture to predict that the Commissioners will find the clergy in all parts of the country, their most zealous and useful assistants.

The letter-writer is discontented with the honorary commissioners appointed under the act, for no visible reason, except that they are not exclusively of his own nomination, and that he is not himself among them. But surely this latter cannot be a ground of discontent with Mr. Bowles; who appears to have smarted sufficiently under the mistaken imputations of the Committee, not to wish to see the powers of the commission exercised under the same influence.

We have been led into this discussion respecting Mr. Bowles's pamphlet, not by any disposition to pronounce an unfavourable opinion upon that performance, which, so far as relates to the points in controversy between him and the learned Chairman, effectually does its work; but in proof of the position, that such a power as the Chairman attempted to create would have stricken terror into the heart of the country. The instances of too implicit assentation which we have quoted from Mr. Bowles's pamphlet, in respect to all the averments and all the proscriptions of his antagonist, except those only which affected the particular case of Mr. Bowles's own society, afford a signal illustration of the manner in which such terror would have operated. If upon such a mind as Mr. Bowles's— the mind of a man of talents, a scholar, and a poet-the operation was thus perceptible, what might have been expected to be

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the feelings of humbler and less enlightened individuals! How would rural parishes and petty corporations and men of quiet and retired habits have trembled, not (as may be tauntingly alleged) from consciousness of guilt, but from apprehension of vexation at the approach of these 'stern' imprisoning Commissioners! Hence mutual distrust; hence secret delations; hence rival attempts to get before each other with information not always fastidiously correct, with the view of diverting to a distant object the fury which each dreaded for himself.

Huntingdon and St. Bees afford pretty pregnant instances how the powers of the Commission might have been applied on the eve of an election, and the Commission would necessarily have survived five or six elections at the least. It would have been a goodly sight to see the various propitiatory offers from many a decayed borough, just roused by a well-timed intimation of inquiry in the course of the last Session of the Parliament!-Not in the hope of prevailing so far as to obtain a total immunity from visitation (duty and patriotism must have frustrated that expectation), but merely that it might be deferred, in their particular case, till about the twentyfifth year of the Commission.

In the Universities and Great Schools, consequences not less evil must have followed. There would have been an end to the peace and good government of such societies from the moment that a tribunal so composed and so empowered should have been set up to over-hang them, for the purpose (ingenuously avowed) custodiendi ipsos custodes. Of the supersession of the rights of visitors, whose appointment by the will of founders must be held a part and condition of their bequests, we have already spoken. But with the resident governing authorities the interference would have been still more direct and still more mischievous. What wilful boy would have been flogged, without seeking his revenge by an anonymous impeachment of the master? What refractory youth at college would have paid the penalty of an unperformed imposition, without sending up to his friend at the Temple or Lincoln's Inn a billet to be dropped into the Lion's mouth, enouncing the abuses of the domus fund, or the intemperance of the fellows' Combination-Room? The results of such denunciations would ere long have come down in dark intimations of a detachment of this ambulatory brotherhood being on its way from Town. Anon, it would have been buzzed through the cloisters that a couple of them had actually arrived, and were at that moment junketting in the buttery. Presently, it would be known that the late college-porter, who had been dismissed for incorrigible drunkenness two years ago, had been recognized, among the confidential followers of the Hermandad, on the outside of the stage; and that the sub-master, a worthy but strict man, who had pronounced that sentence of elimination, was already,

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already put under a course of severe secret interrogatory, (or examination'; no matter which.) Next morning the conveyance of this respected individual to the Bridewell, for having steadily refused to consider himself as absolved from his oath by a construction of the statutes at which his moral and grammatical conscience revolted, would be a signal for the cessation of all discipline. It would then perhaps have depended upon the accidental prevalence of affection or dislike towards the governing part of the society, and of a turbulent or a generous spirit among the youth, whether the first ebullitions of licence should manifest themselves in acts of insubordination against the resident authorities, or of scarcely less reprehensible irreverence towards the sacred persons of the intrusive visitation.

It is idle to argue that such investigations can do no harm —for that, if nothing is found amiss, the Society comes out the purer from the fire.-As if it were sport to be put upon trial as if every possessor of property, corporate or individual, must rejoice to produce his title-deeds for inspection in order to shew how perfectly they were drawn! as if it were quite pleasant to have either to consent to, or to decline such trial or such production with no other argument to sway the decision than imprisonment thrown into the declining scale! As if Mr. Clarke must have had a most delightful journey when summoned (by such billets-doux as we have cited) to leave his home at four and twenty hours notice, and hasten to the Committee! As if Dr. Wood could have felt himself undishonoured by inquiries which brought his probity into question, though they could not throw a stain upon it that would stick! As if Dr. Goodall never passed a more agreeable afternoon than that in which the serious imputations of the mal-administration of Eton College were relieved by the tea-table gossip about Professor Porson's pretty hand-writing!

Such then was the original plan of the Commission, for not having adopted which precisely as proposed, the Government have been reproached and reviled: for having restrained which within some limits of time; for having subjected it to occasional revision both by the Crown and by Parliament; for having conformed it to the analogies of precedent, and brought it within the scope of the Constitution, they have been held up to public odium and suspicion as enemies of all wholesome inquiry, and protectors of all imaginable malversation. Our readers are by this time enabled to judge for themselves of the degree of credit which is due to so shameless, so senseless an accusation. But we confess we are not ourselves entirely satisfied with the conduct of the Government in the whole of this transaction. We should have been still better satisfied, if the alterations made in the original plan of the learned Chairman had been made, luce palam, by open debate in the House

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of Commons, rather than by private communications in the lobbies. The consequence of the mode which was followed has been, that the original plan has never been discussed at all; that the public only learn that it was altered; but of the grounds, and the scope of those alterations there is no account but what is to be found in the learned Chairman's own publications. How faithful that account, it has been our endeavour in some degree to shew. But a subsequent shewing is comparatively without effect-it is too much like a justification. The Bill, as first framed in the intention of the mover, ought, in our opinion, to have been taken to pieces before the eyes of the world in its earliest stages. The public would then have gone with the government in the process of the alterations, and would have heard and appreciated the reasons for them as they arose. If delicacy towards the mover, and a desire to avoid mixing politics with charity were (as we verily believe) the motives of this forbearance, the Government see their reward. But they had yet a higher duty to perform. At the same time that they obviated misrepresentation, and rendered such an impression against themselves as has been attempted to be created, impossible; they also would have exhibited in the Bill, as originally conceived, a scaring specimen of the monstrous projects which (when the times are unhappily favourable for such conjunctions) political ambition begets upon popular reform.

The Commission which has been appointed will, we trust, be found to have entered with exemplary diligence upon the business allotted to it; and we anticipate from its labours the most satisfactory results. We think it not improbable that the range of its inquiry may be beneficially extended, although, to occupy this wider field of action, and at the same time to assign to its labours any reasonable limits, it seems necessary that its number should be enlarged. We can easily understand why three should be a better (as it is a more usual) quorum than two, in any matter involving the probability of difference of opinion; but of all the alterations indeed which were made in the bill by the House of Lords, that which extended the quorum from two to three (the whole number of missioners remaining the same) appeared to us the most question- ́ able.

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As to the object with which these inquiries should be pursued, we fear we shall continue to differ essentially from the Honourable Chairman of the late Committee. To bring back the application of diverted revenues to the original purposes of those who bequeathed then, is, in our view, the only legitimate object; not to seize them into the hands of the state, and parcel them out anew according to the lights of modern refinement. We have stricter notions of property. The misapplication, or even the abuse of a