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II.]
OF ENGLAND.
17

of her Majesty's dominions, and causing very different kinds of sensation in England. If your readers want to refresh themselves with something novel, just let them read Sir Robert Peel's oration at Belfast.

The Liverpool Financial Reform Association has been trying to open a crusade against the present system of taxation. But the people will not be moved, except by Jenny Lind. Mr. Robertson Gladstone and his friends have experimented by engaging the services of a smart literary lecturer, Mr. Washington Wilks, who has addressed meetings in some of the large towns, with the rooms only half filled. Mr. Wilks is instructed to abolish the Custom Houses altogether, and he illustrated the blessings of cheap tea by quoting the case of Australia. There, he said, tea was untaxed, and "the shepherds on the Australian prairies drank it by the bucketful."

The working of free institutions in Australia has been a fruitful subject with the English press, from the Times downwards, and it is amusing to read the ignorant and self-conceited comments of some of the country papers. The articles in the Times appear to me reckless enough, and their